Education

Don’t Confuse Trusting the Experts with Knowing the Facts

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FEE Stories

Patrick Carroll

If someone were to ask you how you know Australia exists, what would you say? If you haven’t been there yourself, it can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer. You might point to your grade school geography teacher who first told you about the country. “I know it exists because my teacher told me it exists,” you might say. Alternatively, you might mention a friend of yours who has visited the country and can testify to its existence. Finally, you might point out that you’ve consulted an atlas and confirmed that the country does, in fact, appear on the map.

Though each of these justifications may sound compelling, they all lean on a critical linchpin: trust. “Trust me,” your teacher says, “I’ve looked into this.” “Trust me,” your friend says, “I saw it with my own eyes.” “Trust us,” the atlas publishers say, “we’ve consulted the experts.”

To be sure, these are often trustworthy sources, but it’s important to …

Health Care

The Problem With Declaring a ‘Pandemic Amnesty’

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Fee Stories

Jack Elbaum

Last week, The Atlantic published an article by Dr. Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University, titled “Let’s Declare A Pandemic Amnesty.”

In the piece, Oster argues that, throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we were plagued by a lack of true knowledge about the best way to react to the virus. Consequently, “almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong.”

Because of this, Oster argues we should forgive those who were wrong and move on; after all, how could they be blamed for their position when all the information was not available? By doing this, she concludes, we can avoid “a repetitive doom loop” of negativity and address the issues—ranging from …