Wikipedia and the Shifting Definition of 'Expert'
How do we judge whether a person knows what he or she is talking about? How do we gauge someone's credibility?
At least in part, we rely on a set of cues -- titles, university degrees, papers published, lectures given -- that have long been bound up in the concept of "expertise". If a person is deemed an expert, we are more credulous of their claims, and their words carry more weight. But expertise is a fraught commodity -- lashed inextricably to ...
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