Experts Are Not Always Right

First and foremost who is an expert. An expert may be defined as someone or is said to be someone widely recognized as a person having special skill or knowledge about a particular thing. An expert in other words is a person with intensive knowledge or idea based on research, experience or occupation in a certain area of study. An expert can be by virtue of education, profession or experience believed to have a special knowledge of a subject more than that of an average person, reliable enough that others may rely upon the individual’s way of thinking, believe or judgment. For someone or an individual to be an expert, the person or that particular individual must be professionally or academically qualified for them to be accepted as an ”expert”. The person has to have the technical know-how and a sound knowledge of what his particular field of study is all about. The person must be able to give a very good explanation of questions that are asked which are related to his field.

Just like no man is an island of knowledge, so also experts are not always right. No one has entire knowledge of something and because of no one has entire knowledge, nobody is above mistake. If you call a group of people experts, it is because you believe they know much about their field of study, they cannot make any type of mistake and that they can tackle any problem that has to do with it but the truth is no one can know everything in life because nobody is perfect. For example, a medical doctor is considered to be an expert, and because of the believe that he is capable of diagnosing what the problem is if a person is sick, the person is taken to the doctor who examines the patient and gives the aliment a name. He gives the patient antibiotics to take, after some time, if the patient is still not fit; he is given other antibiotics to take. The doctor keeps giving him antibiotics and conducting different tests until he finally figures out what the problem is. But the question here is, if really a doctor knows everything about his field, why does he have to conduct tests and try different antibiotics? Why doesn’t he just give the patient the perfect antibiotics for his aliment? And the answer is because even a doctor is not perfect and therefore, needs to try different things in other to reach a conclusion.

Another example is that of an editor, the work of an editor is to make sure a book is fit to be published and sold to the public; he removes what is not supposed to be and puts what is supposed to be in a book. If a book is taken to him, he checks the book and forwards it to another editor, the second editor gives it to another editor which is the third editor and the third editor gives it to the fourth person who is the proof reader and then he proofreads and then finally to the chief editor who finally checks the book. But even after the book has been checked by almost five people, at the end of the day, you still find out you don’t have the best work. Why? Because an editor alone cannot check and proof read a book. And also nobody is perfect in life.

One thing that is constant in life is change, which also affects the productivity of experts. Change is dynamic, things keep on changing and people learn new things at every point in life. For example an expert who has conducted a research a year ago won’t expect to have the same result if he conducts another research on the same thing after a year. Because it might be possible that even at the time of his previous research, one thing or the other has changed and it will keep changing because change is dynamic.

An example is that of an engineer who is said to be very creative and an expert in his field, if a car is faulty, he doesn’t just figure out what the problem is by mere looking at the car, he has to check the entire engine of the car before knowing what the problem is and how the problem occurred but even after he repairs the car, it doesn’t mean the car won’t face any more problems in the future, or even if the car faces the same problem in the future, it doesn’t mean it’s the same skill or method he used in repairing the car previously that would be used the next time the problem occurs. Why? Because change is dynamic, everything is bound to change with time and there can be more advanced ways of repairing it.

Another factor that affects the productivity of experts is over confidence. Because of the believe people have in experts, how they think experts don’t make mistakes and how people think they are all-knowing, they tend to overlook the little necessities in their work. They become careless and make a lot of mistakes. An example of an expert’s carelessness is an operation carried out by a surgeon. Who is a surgeon???

A surgeon is an expert in his field which is to operate patients but that doesn’t mean his operations are always successful and that he is not bound to make mistakes. Just like in the case of Dr. Nitin Aggarwal and his patient Gurcharan Singh which happened in sat guru Nagar on Sunday. Urologist Dr. Nitin being an expert detected a tumor in his patient’s urinary bladder which he operated on the 31st march. But then, after the operation, the patient complained of fever and was again showed to the same doctor who diagnosed him with cancer and started chemotherapy. After a month his X-ray was done in a government-run hospital in Dhanaula and the X-ray showed a pair of scissors inside his abdomen. He was then referred to a civil hospital where he was operated again. In this case even though the doctor was an expert in his field, he overlooked the little things he was supposed to pay attention to during the operation and made a great mistake which could have cost the patient’s life. If someone is overconfident or too full of himself, he is bound to be careless and if he is careless then he is bound to make mistakes in life.

Experts make a very huge thing out of what they have just to get what they want from you. For example, doctors have different scientific names for a particular disease, when a sick person is taken to a doctor; he examines the patient and gives the aliment a scientific name, if the patient happens to go to another doctor, the doctor will also examine him and give the disease a different name. All this happens because, they also use their personal opinions and people don’t question them because they feel they are experts in their own field and that they cannot make any form of mistake.

Some experts use their personal opinions in disguise of a well done research and at the end of the day, they fail to provide supporting evidences to back up what they say or write in a book.

Conclusively, experts cannot always be right because no man is an island of knowledge so no one can know everything, no one is perfect, and they tend to make mistakes. Over confidence and carelessness also affects their productivity which also leads them to making lots of mistakes. They make a very huge thing out of what they have just to get what they want and change is dynamic which also affects their productivity.