Don’t trust the charlatans

Narrator: In past times of crisis, we depended more on who we considered to be experts. These days, rightly or wrongly, we have become more cynical about experts and their expert analysis and advice.

An old Russian proverb urges us “to trust and verify.”

Dud: Here’s a question for you, Pete.

Pete: Oh, go on then, if you must.

Dud: How can we be sure that one person’s expert isn’t another’s charlatan?

Pete: Well, let’s start by defining what we actually think a charlatan is.

Dud: Agreed, Pete. Will you start?

Pete: A charlatan pretends to have skills, knowledge, or qualifications that they do not actually possess, often to deceive others for personal gain, such as money or status. Charlatans frequently use tricks, false claims, or deceptive practices to convince others of their expertise. This term is often associated with fraud in fields such as medicine, finance, or any area where expertise is valued. Essentially, a charlatan is a con artist who takes advantage of the trust of others.

Dud: How do you contrast that with someone you could define as an expert?

Pete: An expert possesses deep and comprehensive knowledge or skill in a specific field or topic, usually acquired through extensive study, training and experience. Experts are often recognised for their knowledge and skills by their peers and the community, and they can provide guidance, analysis, or solutions based on their experience.

Experts need knowledge, expertise, recognition, and problem-solving skills. They need a thorough understanding of their area of ​​expertise, including theories, principles and current trends.

Dud: And should they be able to apply those skills themselves?

Pete: In this respect, I am from the Sony school of expertise, quality and design. I believe an expert who cannot apply their knowledge is not an expert but a gentleman or lady amateur.

I consider myself an expert in data, information and knowledge. I can call on my practical and theoretical knowledge and experience in these areas. For example, I know what a data supply chain or pipeline is because I have designed and built them, and they all worked. I have even built end-to-end data warehousing and analytics architectures and processes on many occasions.

Dud: There are many taking heads in IT who wax lyrical in newspapers, magazines, social and professional platforms, blogs, and other outlets. A lot of them, visibly the most successful of them, seem to have, at best, a perfunctory understanding of what they hail and what they hate.

Pete: The most successful influencers on Forbes or LinkedIn are the worst examples of charlatans. Usually, they are also branded as strategists, board advisers, keynote speakers, visionaries, assessors, coaches and consultants. More often than not, they are none of these things. In reality, they are self-serving populists, opportunists and grifters.

Dud: Pete, I asked the audience why grifters are so prevalent in the IT industry. They answered that it can be attributed to several factors:

Narrator: Pete opens his laptop and, after a couple of mouse clicks, shows Dud the presentation.

Pete: Here we go, Dud.

Rapid growth and innovation: The technology sector is evolving rapidly, creating opportunities for people to exploit gaps in knowledge and experience. New technologies can sometimes outpace regulation and enforcement. Lies are rapidly produced, distributed, slandered and forgotten. Nobody pays the price for lying to the businesses, people, and elected representatives.

High demand for skills: With a constant need for skilled professionals, some people may falsely claim experience to land jobs or contracts, especially in cybersecurity, software development or data science.

Complexity and jargon: IT can be highly technical and complicated for outsiders to understand, making it easy for scammers to trick clients or employers with technical jargon and complex claims.

Lack of regulation: Compared to other professions, the technology industry is less regulated, allowing individuals to operate with minimal oversight.

The desire for quick profits: The potential for high financial returns in the IT sector can attract those seeking quick profits without the effort required to develop fundamental skills.

Anonymity and online presence: The digital nature of the industry allows for greater anonymity, making it easier for dishonest individuals to operate without accountability.

Pete: Fascinating, Dud.

Narrator: So, buyer beware, and in the immortal words of Arthur Schopenhauer, “The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at the bottom, he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.”

Consider this garden-variety definition. When one lacks experience, education, or knowledge or does not have the time or inclination to acquire it, a cognitive authority is a person, organization, media source, group, or leader whose information one takes as secondhand knowledge based on that entity’s credibility, trustworthiness, and reliability. One can be mistaken about whether the authority is sound or not.

It’s a bit dense for many people. Still, according to my robotic authority, “From a different user perspective, the phenomenon of expertise poses two problems for liberal democratic theory: the first is whether it creates inequalities that undermine citizen government or turn it into a sham; the second is whether the state can preserve its neutrality in liberal “government by discussion” while subsidizing, relying on, and granting special status to the opinions of experts and scientists. A standard Foucauldian critique suggests that neutrality is impossible, that expert power and state power are inseparable, and that expert power is the source of current regimes’ oppressive and inegalitarian effects. Jürgen Habermas argues that expert cultures make democratic debate impossible. Analogous problems arise with “cognitive authority,” understood in terms of Mertonian Norms. As understood by Merton, cognitive authority allows us to ask about the democratic legitimacy of this authority, which appears to solve the problem (or part of the problem) because it returns ultimate “authority” to the people who reject or accept experts’ claims. Indeed, many claims of expertise fail to be accepted. By examining the type of expert who seems to evade the demands of legitimation, it is shown that knowledge and liberal democracy can, in principle, coexist, contrary to what critics claim.”

This also applies to business, and in our case, especially to expertise in data, information, and knowledge architecture and management.

Martyn Jones, The Celtic Empire, 14th October 2024.