Trusting scientific experts in an online world

Abstract

A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social epistemology has thus become determining what the markers of trustworthiness are that laypersons can appeal to in order to identify and acquire information from expert testifiers. At the same time, the ways in which we acquire scientific information has changed significantly, with much of it nowadays being acquired in online environments. While much has been said about the potential pitfalls of seeking information online (e.g. the prevalence of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and the overall proliferation of "fake news"), little has been said about how the nature of seeking information online should make us think about the problem of expert testimony. Indeed, it seems to be an underlying assumption that good markers of trustworthiness apply equally well when seeking information from expert testifiers in online and offline environments alike, and that the new challenges and opportunities presented by online environments merely affects the methods by which we can acquire evidence of said trustworthiness. Here I argue that in making this assumption one risks failing to account for how unique features of the ways in which we acquire information online affect how we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Specifically, I argue for two main claims: first, that the nature of information-seeking online is such that the extent to which information is susceptible to manipulation is a dominant marker of trustworthiness; second, as a result, one will be more likely to seek out a particular kind of expert testifier in online environments, what I call a cooperative as opposed to preemptive expert. The result is that criteria for expert trustworthiness may look significantly different when acquiring information online as opposed to offline.

Testimonial Epistemic Rights in Online Spaces

“…And while there are well-researched differences between the ways we interact with others online as compared to offline, 10 we might still think that the kinds of interpersonal relationships that we establish online are capable of providing testimonial justification and grounding testimonial epistemic rights. After all, authors of books can meet the standards of theories of interpersonal testimonial justification since the writing of a book for public consumption constitutes a provision of assurance to whoever reads it, and the reader can recognize that such a provision has 10 I've argued elsewhere that these factors are particularly important when it comes to the ways that we trust experts online, as an overall dearth of information about the relevant expert online and the possibility for manipulation of traditional markers of expertise cause us to turn to different types of markers of expertise (see Boyd 2022). been made.…”