Expert Claims Research Articles

Trust Us—We Are the (COVID-19 Misinformation) Experts: A Critical Scoping Review of Expert Meanings of “Misinformation” in the Covid Era

Since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, prominent social actors and institutions have warned about the threat of misinformation, calling for policy action to address it. However, neither the premises underlying expert claims nor the standards to separate truth from falsehood have been appraised. We conducted a scoping review of the medical and social scientific literature, informed by a critical policy analysis approach, examining what this literature means by misinformation. We searched academic databases and refereed publications, selecting a total of 68 articles for review. Two researchers independently charted the data. Our most salient finding was that verifiability relied largely on the claims of epistemic authorities, albeit only those vetted by the establishment, to the exclusion of independent evidentiary standards or heterodox perspectives. Further, “epistemic authority” did not depend necessarily on subject matter expertise, but largely on a new type of “expertise”: in misinformation itself. Finally, policy solutions to the alleged threat that misinformation poses to democracy and human rights called for suppressing unverified information and debate unmanaged by establishment approved experts, in the name of protecting democracy and rights, contrary to democratic practice and respect for human rights. Notably, we identified no pockets of resistance to these dominant meanings and uses. We assessed the implications of our findings for democratic public policy, and for fundamental rights and freedoms.

Vox populi, vox dei? The effect of sociotropic and egocentric incongruence on democratic preferences

AbstractSystemic congruence between the whole legislature and the whole electorate (‘many‐to‐many’, or sociotropic congruence) should be the benchmark to evaluate a democratic system. Yet, most studies link shifts in democratic preferences to individual‐level representation (‘many‐to‐one’, or egocentric incongruence), since individual‐level representation failures should be more salient and visible for individual citizens. We argue that the sociotropic incongruence hypothesis has not been appropriately tested to date, because the measure does not vary at individual level in observational data. Using an experiment conducted in France, we manipulate various sociotropic (in)congruence scenarios at the individual level. In addition to the incongruence hypotheses, our original experiment tests whether offering expertise‐based justifications to incongruence attenuates the backlash against representatives. We find that, even when giving sociotropic incongruence a fair test, egocentric incongruence still consistently shapes democratic preferences, while the effect of sociotropic incongruence remains negligible. Furthermore, we find that narratives rooted in expertise claims do not attenuate the effect of representation failure on backlash against representative democracy: they exacerbate it.

Making Rivers, Producing Futures: The Rise of an Eco-Modern River Imaginary in Dutch Climate Change Adaptation

In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way adaptation projects are implemented in rivers. In this paper, we challenge the ways in which dominant paradigms and expert claims monopolise the truth concerning policies and designs of river futures, thereby sidelining and delegitimising alternative river futures. So far, limited work has been performed on the power of river futures in the context of climate change adaptation. We conceptualised the power of river futures through river imaginaries, i.e., collectively performed and publicly envisioned reproductions of riverine socionatures mobilised through truth claims of social life and order. Using the Border Meuse project as a case study, a climate change adaptation project in a stretch of the river Meuse in the south of the Netherlands, and a proclaimed success story of climate adaptation in Dutch water management, we elucidated how three river imaginaries (a modern river imaginary, a market-driven imaginary, and an eco-centric river imaginary) merged into an eco-modern river imaginary. Importantly, not only did the river futures merge, but their aligned truth regimes also merged. Thus, we argue that George Orwell’s famous quote, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past” can be extended to “who controls the future, controls how we see and act in the present, and how we rediscover the past”.

Contestations over risk expertise, definitions and insecurities: The case of European football

This article advances sociological debates which, since the 1990s, have proliferated over the nature of ‘risk’ and ‘insecurity’ in modern societies. Central here is Ulrich Beck’s work, dealing with questions regarding which expert systems and institutions possess the ability to define what constitutes a risk or not. For Beck, hegemonic relations of definitions are central in the identification and construction of risk. However, risks are contested by wider publics, sub-political groups and movements. Notwithstanding, existing literature predominantly explores these contestations through techno-scientific contexts. Through a case-study of European men’s football (1985–2023), this article extends Beck’s work into the field of sport, by examining how supporter movements have contested expert claims on risk, insecurity and its management in leisure and sporting cultures. The article argues that reflexive cultures of contestation have matured and enabled a small section of ‘recognized’ supporters to become ‘counter-experts’, thereby blurring the expert/public distinction within Beck’s theories. It thus contributes to sociological debates on risk and citizen-expert contestations in contemporary social contexts.

Epistemic Coercion

Recent developments in social epistemology have applied a radically expansive notion of harm which encompasses beliefs and kinds of scientific knowledge. The implied or explicit implication of these notions is that these harms need to be suppressed. The notion of disinformation has turned this into institutional practice. The Covid pandemic saw the development and widespread use of actual means of knowledge suppression and epistemic engineering, both within science and with respect to expert claims, within nominally free societies. Paul Feyerabend’s Science in a Free Society addressed these issues by critiquing the erasure of coercion from the past history of science and the practice of ignoring the coercive elements of expertise. Here I take this seriously, and turn the problem upside down by treating coercion and resistance to coercion as inherent parts of science and the public role and place in science and in discourse generally. Regardless of one’s views on these questions it is evident that the rise of digital technologies, such as social media, has created novel opportunities for control, distinctive forms of epistemic control, and a need for rethinking the possibility of resistance to the coercive powers of the new technologies. This is a preliminary formulation of some of the issues.

Outsourcing authority in global policy: legitimating the anti-money laundering regime through professionalization

Abstract How is authority legitimated when global policy leads to the delegation of implementation and monitoring tasks to private actors? This paper shows that putting private actors at the forefront of compliance gives them significant interpretation autonomy, with knock-on effects for how rule-making authority is legitimated. I show that actors can mobilize to claim expertise based on their practice in, and input to, transnational administration and that professional associations are important arenas for establishing and legitimating these claims. The paper explores these dynamics through an empirical focus on the global anti-money laundering regime. Revolving around the Financial Action Task Force, the regime to tackle illicit finance has been a highly political process with a global reach. Yet it relies heavily on financial institutions to put systems in place that control the flow of money. This puts private compliance officers at the forefront of transnational administration. The paper shows that compliance officers have responded to the demands of this role by professionally organizing. Focusing on the largest professional association, the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists or ACAMS, a US-based association with a global program and membership, the paper explains that professionalization mechanisms have helped demarcate practice boundaries and support the expertise claims of private sector employees. By becoming the experts, these officers can claim pragmatic authority over what global policy rules and standards mean and how they can be implemented.

SMUGGLING CIGARETTES TROUGH THE BORDER SECTION PROTECTED BY NADBUZANSKI BORDER GUARD REGIONAL UNIT AS A THREAT AND BORDER SECURITY PROTECTION CHALLENGE

The aim of this article is to present one of the vital problems the Border Guard fights against – smuggling cigarettes through the borders, which has a worldwide range, but this article is focused on cigarette smuggling routes from Eastern Europe through (and to) Poland, taking into consideration Polish border section protected by Nadbuzanski Border Guard Regional Unit (NBGRU). The article also presents the peculiarities occurring in smuggling goods tendencies used by criminals and presents the methods of fighting against this problem, as efficient protection of EU external borders is an important part of the European border protection system. The tendencies indicated in this article, engage mostly organized criminal groups in smuggling excise goods, and their determination and brutality, clearly show that decisive steps are needed to fight against smugglers. In the future, we should expect that Poland will be not only the transit territory for smuggling cigarettes but also the recipient as OLAF experts claim. The article is an attempt to indicate the problem of smuggling cigarettes through the borders which has a worldwide range, on the example of one section of the Polish border protected by NBGRU, which of course, does not present all sides of the problem. It is obvious to everyone that stopping this business is impossible, but what is real and all countries trying to tackle this problem should consider, is controlling this activity and limiting the scale of smuggling cigarettes by effective cooperation of all law enforcement institutions on both – national and international levels.

A Hybrid Model for Detecting Insurance Fraud Using K-Means and Support Vector Machine Algorithms

Private stakeholders and governments across the globe are striving to improve the quality and access of healthcare services to citizens. The need to improve healthcare services, coupled with the increase in social awareness and improvement of people’s living standards, has seen an increase in medical policyholders in the insurance industry. Even so, the healthcare sector is grappled with increased costs every other year, leading to revision of premiums and increased costs for the policyholders. One of the main factors contributing to the increased costs is fraudulent claims raised by the service providers and the policyholders, leading to unprecedented risks and losses for insurance firms. The insurance industry has set up fraud detection and mitigation systems to mitigate losses brought about by fraudulent claims, which come in two flavors: rule-based systems and expert claims analysis. With rule-based systems, conditions such as missing details, location of the claim vis a vis the location of the policyholder, among other rules, are evaluated by systems to assess the validity of the claims. On the other hand, insurance firms rely on the human intervention of experts using statistical analyses and artificial rules to detect fraudulent claims. The rule-based and expert analysis methods fail to detect patterns or anomalies in claims, which is central to efficient fraud detection. Data mining and machine learning techniques are being leveraged to detect fraud. This automation presents enormous opportunities for identifying hidden patterns for further analysis by insurance firms. This research aims to analyze a hybrid approach to detect medical insurance fraud using both K-Means (unsupervised) and Support Vector Machines (supervised) machine learning algorithms.

Decolonising Southern knowledge(s) in Aidland

ABSTRACT South–South Co-operation (SSC) has become increasingly important in international development policy and practice as both alternative and complementary to North–South Co-operation. Crafted through the acceptance, appropriation, and instrumentalisation of a colonialist idea of an underdeveloped world, SSC has been historically defined as an expression of Southern solidarity, through which developing countries collaborate to achieve progress, modernity, and development. It is often claimed to involve mutually beneficial, horizontal exchange of resources between developing countries – particularly knowledge – and to foster decolonising practices. In this paper, I argue that while one of the starting points for SSC was opposition to North–South knowledge hierarchies, its legitimisation has been constructed through postcolonial power inequalities and new forms of authoritative knowledge that reiterate old hierarchies. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research conducted as part of my doctoral studies, I show how the building and international legitimatisation of Brazilian ‘best practices’ – in the gender equality field – has produced a political economy of opportunities and mobility for these professionals; their professional pathways to Mozambique are indicative of the processes of production of Southern expertise and new knowledge hierarchies. I also discuss Brazilian development workers’ discourses about the relevance of Brazilian experiences to Mozambique. Theoretically, the paper is inspired by critical development theory with a feminist and postcolonial approach. It uses postcolonial literature, usually applied to relations between colonisers and former colonies, to look at how colonial discourses and discourses about Africa, the ‘Third World’, and the West historically intervened in the encounters between people from former colonies and continue to be activated. Specifically, I analyse imaginaries of ‘Southern’ and ‘developing country’ identity embedded in expertise claims.

Experts and migrants – A survey experiment on public acceptance of violence and child protection interventions

Do experts influence public attitudes toward familial violence and child protection interventions? Are public attitudes on familial violence and child protection interventions biased against migrant families? I conduct a vignette experiment survey on the Norwegian population’s acceptance of psychological and indirect violence to determine whether acceptance increases or decreases due to causal claims credited to experts and/or alleged violence in migrant families, and whether these factors influence the population’s recommended intervention. The analysis shows that there is significant differential acceptance with regard to violence in the children’s environment in migrant and non-migrant families. Yet, concerning psychological violence and state interventions there appears to be little difference. The population attitudes appear unaffected by expert claims with regard to acceptance of violence and state interventions. The study contextualises criticism against the Norwegian child protection services that claims migrant children risks living longer under violent conditions in Norway, as well as claims about a lack of cultural sensitivity. Judicial decision-makers acting in this environment must balance allegations of violence with societal norms and the law, having to ensure equality and not legitimising potential discriminating attitudes.

The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Abstract Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.

Aesthetics with Single Implants in the Anterior Sector: What Experts Claim

The objective of this article is to review the keys for the correct placement of implants in the anterior sector of the maxilla in order to achieve long-term implant success and, since it is an anterior sector, correct aesthetics.
 There should be a distance of at least 1.5 mm between the tooth and the implant, and ideally, the minimum vestibular thickness of bone of the implant should be 2 mm. Between implants the mesio-distal distance should be 3 mm and regarding the apico-coronal we should have at least 3 mm from the margin of the implant to the future restoration.
 The case must be planned carefully and we have to decide: when to place the implant, the provisional restoration, the type of implant, requirement of a graft, etc.

Expert Claims in Clinical Meetings: Analysing the Relational Role of Medical Jargon

This paper explores how a group of clinicians discursively constructs their expert stances using medical jargon as they discuss their professional practices and patients’ cases at a clinic. Guided by the discursive analytic tradition of interactional sociolinguistics, the analysis is based on naturally-occurring conversations that have been audio and video recorded during four clinical meetings in a healthcare setting in New Zealand. This paper shows that the use of medical jargon plays a vital role in constructing expert stances that address the interactional, and especially relational, needs of participants in these clinical meetings. In particular, the paper discusses the role of medical jargon in the construction of clinicians’ expert stances when building ingroup alignments, managing professional criticism and managing disagreement in peer-peer interactions. Concluding remarks offer reflections on the role of medical jargon in the construction of clinicians’ relational stance and the need to further investigate the use of specialised jargon in other contexts of peer communication.

Second-Order Assessment of Scientific Expert Claims and Sharing Epistemic Burdens in Science Communication

AbstractWhen laypersons are presented with scientific information which seeks to modify their way of life, they are expected to believe, suspend belief, or reject it. Second-order assessment of scientific experts helps laypersons to make an informed decision in such situations. This is an assessment of the trustworthiness of the person making the scientific claim. In this paper I challenge the optimistic view of Anderson (2011), regarding the ease with which laypersons can perform second-order assessment of experts, by pointing out some of the obstacles that may prevent laypersons from arriving at an informed decision through this means. By showing that laypersons cannot easily perform second-order assessment of experts, I make a case for sharing epistemic burdens in science communication by using Lackey's (2006) concept of dualism in the epistemology of testimony and Irzik and Kurtulmus’ (2019) work on public epistemic trust in science, as a guide. I invite experts to bear a greater share of the epistemic burden when communicating with laypersons because of their privileged epistemic condition vis-à-vis laypersons.

Geodiversity Research at the Crossroads: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Geodiversity research is a growing industry. However, in contrast to diversity studies in other branches of natural sciences, geodiversity specialists have only paid attention to one side of the coin. They focused on the conservation of geological heritage (geoconservation) and its role/use for economic development through geotourism. Most geodiversity experts forgot the more strictly scientific side of the coin such as the use of standard techniques to inventory georesources and analyze their spatial patterns. Furthermore, the lack of a consensual definition with universal classifications and standards to carryout inventories inhibits progress in the inventory and quantification of planetary geodiversity. Even though most definitions of geodiversity include soil resources, pedodiversity is generally ignored in geodiversity research and publications. On the other hand, pedodiversity studies tended to follow the path previously created by biodiversity experts over a period of decades, although they have not convinced policymakers to approve strategies to preserve global soil resources (parks, pedosites, reserves, etc.). Biodiversity studies paid attention to the role of diversity in the structure and function of biocenosis, ecosystems, and biomes, with preservation being placed in the hands of experts in conservation biology. The structure and dynamics of all the Earth surface systems could be analyzed using the standard mathematical tools developed for biodiversity studies and that have been applied with success in pedodiversity analyses. In fact, most of the patterns detected in biodiversity also appear in pedodiversity. According to the canons of the philosophy of science, geodiversity has not reached a paradigm shift, despite the claims of some geodiversity experts. Thus, geodiversity research is at a crossroads as it seeks to reach a genuine paradigm shift.

Whose Knowledge Counts in the Planning of Urban Sustainability? – Investigating Handbooks for Nudging and Participation

When planning sustainable districts, planners mediate between the knowledge claims of citizens and experts. The planning strategies nudging and participation provide contradictory ideas about how planners can perform this mediation. We analyse handbooks for the two strategies, guided by the question: whose knowledge counts? These handbooks provide citizens, experts and planners with varying degrees of authority. While nudging positions behavioural experts as holding authority, and citizens are central in participation, planners feature in the background in both strategies. We show how these seemingly apolitical strategies are actually value-laden. Implementing them literally will undermine planning for urban sustainability.

Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker's Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia

Linda Farthing and Thomas Becker's Coup:A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia Gabriel Panuco-Mercado (bio) Introduction November 2019 marked the sudden end of Evo Morales's fourteen years as Bolivia's president. During the tumultuous weeks that followed, politicos, journalists, and international organizations ardently argued about whether Morales's ouster constituted a coup by political opponents. Over two years later, there is still no consensus. Nevertheless, among the many works—scholarly and journalistic—that argue a golpe de estado took place, Coup: A Story of Violence and Resistance in Bolivia is one of the most compelling. The book presents a uniquely grounded argument by placing the overthrow in the historical context of Bolivian politics, juxtaposing anecdotal Bolivian experiences alongside anti-Morales punditry, and carefully weighing conflicting accounts. The authors conclude that a coup did indeed take place in Bolivia in November 2019. This review explores how journalist and researcher Linda Farthing and human rights lawyer Thomas Becker came to this conclusion. Historicizing Bolivian politics Farthing and Becker historicize their account of the coup by illustrating continuities in Bolivian political oustings, elitist politics, and Indigenous resistance leading up to 2019. Treated as a singular event, many have argued that the 2019 ouster did not qualify as a proper coup. However, against a history of coups and within a broader context of Bolivian anti-Indigenous racism, elitism, and state violence, the authors depict the historical precedents and momentum that led to what happened in Bolivia in 2019. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Bolivia, along with Ecuador, has experienced the most coups in Latin America.1 Notably, the 1962 coup established a dictatorship that lasted until 1984, followed by a period of neoliberalization. This period of privatization, economic hardship, and declining social programs fomented anti-government resentment, and the rise of Indigenous and campesino movements, culminating in the 2005 victory of Morales's leftist MAS2 party.3 According to Coup, the 2019 ouster of Morales was only the latest in a long line of twenty-three coup attempts since 1950, emerging from a confluence of historical antagonisms in a violent political moment.4 The authors highlight instances where anti-Indigenous racism, elitism, and state violence met throughout Bolivian history, dating back to the country's colonial period and building the foundation for present-day Bolivian politics. According to them, "three colonial and post-colonial processes shape Bolivia: the expropriation of resources by national and international elites; Indigenous peoples' resistance; and contention between the country's regions."5 Within these historical trends, racism has been a constant, along with extractive economic structures that privilege elites—even during Morales's presidency. When middle-class and elite Bolivians in Santa Cruz began protesting Morales's government in November 2019 after years of benefiting from extractive economic policies, they provided the opportunity for a right-wing coup that sought to marginalize Indigenous and campesino Bolivians.6 Middle-class and elite protests, threats against MAS politicians and voters, and the use of both private and state violence [End Page 137] against Indigenous Bolivians during the coup all fit historical patterns that have enabled ring-wing control. These examples provide powerful evidence for Farthing and Becker's argument. Nevertheless, it might have been beneficial for the authors to draw more concrete connections between the 2019 Bolivian crisis and Latin America's twentieth-century coups earlier in the book. While the authors mention these historical parallels as they conclude, an earlier introduction to this history would have primed readers to consider how Bolivia compared to other regional examples. Everyday Bolivians and punditry Farthing and Becker extensively describe the 2019 political crisis as seen from the ground, juxtaposing the experiences of everyday Bolivians against expert claims about electoral fraud and constitutional overreach that legitimized Morales's overthrow. Farthing and Becker regularly place Bolivian anecdotes next to pundit analyses to highlight the chasm between the two. Western critics of Morales focused on legal formalities and mechanisms while many Bolivians had different concerns—their livelihoods and representation for their identities.7 Moreover, Farthing and Becker put the consequences of the political crisis in a different light than many expert analyses at the time. Pundits inflamed claims...

A Theological Engagement with the Science of Science Skepticism

When Christians reject the claims of scientific experts, are they being irrational? Much of recent discussion in scholarly and popular media have discussed science denialism by conservative Christians, linking a low view of scientific expertise to the United States’ current political turmoil. This paper will focus on scientific explanations of science skepticism, asking whether there is anything unique to religious communities that make them vulnerable to misinformation.

Refletindo sobre a conceptualização de ‘significado’ em terapia ocupacional

Abstract In this reflection essay, the authors explore how meaning is represented in occupational therapy literature. A review of occupational therapy and occupational science literature uncovers framings of meaning, meaningful, and meaningfulness that are almost exclusively ‘positive’. Positioning of occupations as inherently ‘positive’ and assuming universal experiences of positive meanings for all members of society, overlooks individual and collective diversities. To perpetuate framings of occupations as inherently and exclusively ‘positively meaningful’ effectively silences experiences that do not conform to dominant assumptions and perspectives. Approaching concepts of ‘meaning’ more broadly may allow occupational therapists and scholars to better comprehend what people do and do not do, and why, better situating the profession to promote the espoused goals of equity, justice, and rights. Neglecting nuanced understandings of meaning may forfeit more complex examinations of occupation to other disciplines, thereby undermining disciplinary claims of expertise in the realm of occupation.

Scientific Disciplines and the Admissibility of Expert Evidence in Courts

The authors examine how people interpret expert claims when they do not share experts’ technical understanding. The authors review sociological research on the cultural boundaries of science and expertise, which suggests that scientific disciplines are heuristics nonspecialists use to evaluate experts’ credibility. To test this idea, the authors examine judicial decisions about contested expert evidence in U.S. district courts ( n = 575). Multinomial logistic regression results show that judges favor evidence from natural scientists compared with social scientists, even after adjusting for other differences among experts, judges, and court cases. Judges also favor evidence from medical and health experts compared with social scientists. These results help illustrate the assumptions held by judges about the credibility of some disciplines relative to others. They also suggest that judges may rely on tacit assumptions about the merits of different areas of science, which may reflect broadly shared cultural beliefs about expertise and credibility.