Week 15 Response: Why We Should Value Expertise, but Fear Expert Power

What is the difference between general expertise and expert power?
By: @jacewat
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To me, general expertise could be anyone that has a graduate degree in a topic or 10 plus years of working in a particular area. While I would not consider them the expert of their field, I believe in comparison to the general public they have a wider understanding and deeper knowledge of their topics in order to offer expert opinions or facts on their topics. However, expert power is a person who is an expert in their field but also has publicity to their name that allows them to sometimes make assumptions or offer advice on topics that are not within their field. While expertise is highly important in the scheme of the general public being able to look too educated options and facts about these topics, expert power can lead to people becoming monumental figures the increase biases and misinformation on topics purely because their social and media support allows them to have a feeling of hierarchal opinions over the general public. We as a society need to limit the amount of unwavering support we offer to experts in order to keep their opinions and facts humbled to prevent this confusion. Especially during times of panic and disaster in order to allow experts that are of those fields to actually provide truth instead of people with media presence to offer their bias opinions. All experts should be viewed as a single voice among many, therefore their opinions and assessments should not be viewed as the final word but instead a part of a possible solution.