Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.

-Laurence J. Peter  Author of the Peter Principle 1919 – 1990

If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend you do. After reading the book, an aura of understanding will shine upon you from heaven particularly if you ever wondered why all of the worlds experts on everything are so often very wrong.

The Peter Principle in action

The book, written in 1969, puts forth the theory that everyone in their respective fields will rise in ranks until they finally reach a level of incompetence. For example: you are an excellent bookkeeper. You are meticulous about details, you’re accurate and punctual. The boss is very impressed with you so he decides that you should be head of the department. You are happy to get the raise in pay and extra authority. Unfortunately you are not very good at delegating work or being authoritative with subordinates so you cover everything, working late fixing everyones errors and finishing all the work because you want to show that you can do the job. The board of directors notices how your “department” gets everything done so efficiently and on time so they decide that you should be promoted to Chief Financial Officer. This position is well outside your scope of expertise but you are flattered by the promotion and are sure you can handle it. You find out you really have no idea what you are doing and are not getting anything done, probably doing much more harm than good. The board of directors knows now that you just aren’t qualified but nobody wants to accept the blame for promoting you in the first place. They cannot fire you or demote you as this would expose their own incompetence. The only option is to sideways promote you to a meaningless newly created position and replace you with someone who is actually qualified for that job.

Poof! An extra layer of bureaucracy has been created. You are now the top expert in the office supplies department free to make up whatever statistic that makes your job sound important.Think about this for a while and you will realize that it is true when it comes to government.

Who are the experts?

I think this is especially true when governments quote “experts” without saying who they are. How has the government qualified these “experts”. They don’t feel it is necessary apparently. Is it possible that these “experts” have attained the top spot in their field merely through attrition?

Who should you believe?

As I researched diabetes & keto diet I found out one very interesting thing about experts. There is no such thing. There are people that have opinions, some informed more than others but never unanimous particularly when it comes to health and science.

How often do you hear about a new study from a group of experts that is completely contrary to the previous study done by the last set of experts? What are you to believe? If you google whether eggs are good for you or not, you will find two different opinions from different experts.

Who do you believe?

The FDA in the US are experts on telling us what food and drugs are safe for us. How many times have those “experts” been wrong? It took the FDA almost 40 years to ban trans fats in our foods. I am glad they did but it shows us how reluctant “experts” are to change their view in light of new evidence  because it’s embarrassing. They may lose their status as experts.

As always this is just my opinion. Please comment below if you can think of other instances where “experts” got it wrong but were reluctant to change the view.

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