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Experts are complicated (and other anti-anti-elitism platitudes) - C C - Sep 14, 2026
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/vinay-prasad-and-other-complicated-experts
EXCERPTS: [...] To get a sense of how controversial Prasad is, check out his Wikipedia page. ... I’m woke, Prasad is anti-woke. Shouldn’t this guy be dead to me?
No. I still find much to admire in Prasad. He’s smart, driven by evidence, fearless, unafraid to take on the medical establishment. Check out his recent columns on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force; the high price of cancer drugs; statins. Yes, he’s arrogant and sharp-tongued, and he takes too much pleasure in tweaking liberal academics. But he welcomes pushback and debate.
I don’t have hard-and-fast rules for deciding whether to trust or reject an expert. I make these decisions on a case-by-case basis, and emotions, gut feelings, often come into play. Here are a few other complicated cases:
John Ioannidis. Ioannidis has been pointing out problems with the peer-reviewed scientific literature for decades. [...] I continue to admire Ioannidis because I find his analyses of the scientific literature sound. Also, I was at a weekend workshop with Ioannidis a while back, and I liked him. He struck me not as an ideologue but as a modest, earnest researcher who goes where data take him.
Oliver Sacks. Personal interactions also shape my judgement of Sacks. [...] Last year The New Yorker revealed that Sacks fabricated details of some case studies [...] I say Sacks “remains one of my favorite mind-body explorers.”
Noam Chomsky. Until recently, there was no intellectual I admired more than Noam Chomsky. [...] Then the media reported that Chomsky was chummy with Jeffrey Epstein and gave the sexual predator advice on defending himself. Ugh. I struggle to forgive Chomsky.
Steven Pinker. [...] I also dislike Pinker’s anti-woke diatribes and his defense of the deep-roots theory of war. I nonetheless appreciate how Pinker uses statistics to nudge us away from despair. And I like the guy, whom I’ve met several times. He’s given three talks to my school. Rebecca Goldstein, one of my favorite thinkers, married Pinker, so he can’t be all bad.
Woody Allen. [...] Allen used to be one of my favorite filmmakers. Then I watched “Allen V. Farrow,” an investigation of sexual abuse allegations against him. I came away thinking Allen is a creep and a bully. I can’t watch Allen’s films anymore.
Sabine Hossenfelder. I disagree with this renegade physicist on lots of things, like free will. But I like and admire Hossenfelder for the same reasons I like and admire Vinay Prasad: She’s smart, funny, fearless, she cuts through bullshit. I’m always curious about what Hossenfelder has to say, especially when she agrees with me (sort of).
I could go on and on. I’ve profiled many leading scientists [...and intellectuals...] Of course I’m complicated too. ... So what’s the takeaway for my students? This: There are plenty of genuine experts out there, but no one is infallible, not even me. It’s complications all the way down... (MORE - missing details)