Expertise: Avoid The Trap!

Evidence-Based Medicine posits the judicious use of best scientific evidence and patients’ values and preferences towards health care decisions. The term “judicious” implies a degree of clinical expertise in the application of this evidence. Further, the paradigm of evidence-based medicine moves away from the rather traditional eminence-based approach to medicine. In fact, the evidence ladder, places expert opinion at the bottom of the hierarchy of evidence in favor of more rigorous controlled trials. The skepticism on the value of “expert” opinion permeates not only evidence-based medicine, but also the tech sector, politics, business forecasting, sports analysts and much more.

"The evidence ladder places expert opinion at the bottom of the hierarchy of evidence "

The Road to Expertise is Long, So Why Not Just "fake it"?

Hundreds of books are written on expertise. A quick Google search of “expertise” renders about 490 Million sites, of which about 314,000 refer to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers.  Often misquoted, Malcolm Gladwell, presents a thesis for a 10,000 hour or 10 year rule to becoming an expert. Recent evidence suggests this is likely a gross under-estimate. Evidence suggests gaining expertise in those careers with technical skills requires closer to 25,000 hours.  

"It’s not uncommon for a scientist to be asked to opine on politics, or a politician to lecture about science in defense of their views"

If I'm an Expert, Surely, I Can Speak to Anything, Right?

Expertness has its advantages, but is not without at least one big challenge, something akin to the constant challenge of “staying in our lane”. The greater we narrow our skill set to a few defined areas, the greater we increase the risk (albeit small among most) of influencing others in topic areas outside the ‘zone of our specialization’.   For example, it’s not uncommon for a scientist to be asked to opine on politics, or a politician to lecture about science in defense of their views—neither is likely to lead to a fully satisfying (or fully informed)  response in most cases. The good news, I think, is that most who are specialists tend to have awareness of what they do and don’t know –the stage of Conscious Incompetence on the ‘Competency Ladder’ popularized by Noel Burch in 1970. The challenge, though,  is rooted in those who are unconsciously ignorant about their lack of expertise.  I suspect we’ve all interacted with one or two in our lives.

“Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. The combination of poor self-awareness leads them to overestimate their own capabilities.” Kendra Cherry

Have You Heard About the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

Enter Dr. Dunning and Dr. Kruger, two social psychologists who won a Nobel prize for their research and insights, in the commonly named, Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

“Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of cognitive bias in which people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are. The combination of poor self-awareness leads them to overestimate their own capabilities.” Kendra Cherry

Put another way, lacking self awareness (or the Burch Competency Ladder, -Unconsciously Incompetent)  may get us trapped into ‘pontificating on 99 topics, of which our expertise ain’t 1’. This phenomenon is named after researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the two social psychologists who first described it. As Kendra cherry describes, “they performed a series of four investigations and found that people who scored in the lowest percentiles on tests of grammar, humor, and logic also tended to dramatically overestimate how well they had performed. Their actual test scores placed them in the 12th percentile, yet they estimated that their performance placed them in the 62nd percentile.”

Dunning posits, "incompetent people have at least 3 traits: They overestimate their own skill levels, they fail to recognize the genuine skill and expertise of other people, and they have an inability to recognize their own mistakes and lack of skill"

David Dunning speaks frankly about incompetence.  Dunning posits, "incompetent people have at least 3 traits: They overestimate their own skill levels, they fail to recognize the genuine skill and expertise of other people, and they have an inability to recognize their own mistakes and lack of skill." If we are truthful, for most of us, our competence is limited to a fairly narrow set of skills. In the universe of knowledge, I’d guess I’m at about 1% competent, and 99% incompetent. Sorry, that’s likely a gross over-estimate. Let me correct it to 0.00001% competent, and 99.9999% incompetent.  Actually, that’s likely an over-estimate. You get the point.   Here’s the grand challenge--can we have insight to things we truly don’t know and be humble in the realization that we have much to learn.

A survey of 40,000 young individuals provides compelling empirical evidence about those who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience or skill

Fake it Till you Make it- and the birth of “Bullshitting”

It’s likely that our inclination towards this Dunning-Kruger phenomenon starts early in life. Nikki Shure, a social scientist , and colleagues using data from a survey of 40,000 young individuals provides compelling empirical evidence about “those who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience or skill. ”  In this provocative study entitled, “Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives”, regression analyses suggest bullshitters express much higher levels of self-confidence in their skills than non-bullshitters, even when they are of equal academic ability.

Males of higher socioeconomic status, living in North America, were significantly associated with higher scores on the scale (one they endearingly qualified as their “bullshit index”) developed by Shure and colleagues. While risks to bias such as responder biases (ie social desirability bias) in these analyses obviously exist, this study provides interesting food for thought.  

 Okay, So Some People are Over-confident--How does this affect my life?

We all risk over-confidence in our self-evaluation of abilities. Here’s the point. Simply knowing we might be unaware is the first step towards change. A scientist, for example, might be a very poor writer and communicator. A brilliant surgeon may be a poor administrator and a competent engineer may be a terrible entrepreneur. You can likely come up with hundreds of similar examples. Those scientists, surgeons, and engineers who have insight can change their situation, and those who do not are unlikely to improve.

Getting better at something requires us to first learn the basic techniques and skills—but that’s not how we go from good to great, or great to exceptional.

Aware and Confident: The Sweet spot on the Path to Expertise

Getting better at something requires us to first learn the basic techniques and skills—but that’s not how we go from good to great, or great to exceptional.  I tend to conceptualize it the following way. In any skill acquisition process, moving step wise from Unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, conscious competences, and unconscious competence (the state of true FLOW, see article: Anatomy of a Breakthrough) requires a real focus of time and energy. However, once you're pretty good at something, the curve often plateaus—and further focus and efforts often have diminishing returns.  Getting better at this point, in my opinion, is not able doing more of the same; rather, it’s about getting perspective by doing “less of the same” and “more complementary activities”. Elite cyclists, do a lot of riding, but they also work hard on complementary skills like riding IQ and the psychology of a winning mindset.  Scientists often benefit from the arts, they say. So, why not pick up an old childhood musical instrument or take an art class, or jump on your old bike, or read a good book—who knows, you may just breakthrough that plateau in your career, and life!