Freedman on when to trust expert advice
“The point isn't that you should always do what the experts say but rather that making giant, sweeping decisions without listening to them at all is really dumb.
At the very least, more of us ought to be following consensus expert advice that seems well supported, is not terribly burdensome to implement, and appears to have little downside, such as eating fish (or taking fish oil), not eating large quantities of saturated fat, getting exercise, putting aside money into tax-deferred savings plans, employing encouragement with children much more often than browbeating, keeping our minds active as we move into older age, keeping our eye on the golf ball as we swing and so on. And yet many of us manage to avoid following advice that not only is espoused by a wide range of experts but seems so basic and well proven that to mistrust it would appear to defy all logic."
— from page 216 of Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us — And How to Know When Not to Trust Them in a chapter entitled Eleven simple never-fail rules.
