I wish I had an oscilloscope that would allow me to measure the impact of words on people’s minds. An instrument to probe if a certain phrase opens or shuts down a mind. If I were to have this magical device, I’d be dying to see if the data would confirm my intuition that the usage of the word “expert” statistically shuts down minds instead of opening them. Until I have access to such instrument allow me to use my own mind as a lab rat.
According to the Oxford dictionary:
Expert : a person with special knowledge, skill or training in something.
Specialist: a person who is an expert in a particular area of work or study.
Once can almost argue that the two concepts are identical or interchangeable, so why rant at all? The hidden subtlety in these two concepts and in particular in the way that they are used lies with how « knowledge » is transferred.
There is a very transactional nature to seeking help from an expert. I need help with XYZ, could you provide me with support to solve XYZ. Yes/No, here is the proposed solution. Thank you very much. Have a good day. This makes sense in many areas of life, I am certain that small businesses or hospitals are grateful to have access to the services of tax experts, excellent IT and qualified care.
In academia though, the story is different. What is the metric for a successful academic? The number of new ideas? The numbers of published papers? The number of presentations at conferences? The number of supervised PhDs?
The common denominator in all of these metrics is knowledge, and how one is in a constant effort towards expanding it, seeking it, sharing it, understanding it and so on.
Yet, the person referred to as the expert stands in opposition with the fluidity of how knowledge is transferred. What is the difference with a specialist you might ask? A specialist is a person who will dedicate a significant amount of their time studying a given topic. Furthermore, a specialist will not gate keep their knowledge, they might train the next specialist and certainly they will never withhold information.
The academic expert is surrounded by a tower guarding their knowledge. This knowledge might be accessed on specific demand or shared in such a cryptic way that no curiosity is triggered and certainly no desire to expand one’s own knowledge is sparked.
The dichotomy that I am painting might sound simplistic, therefore I would like to invite you to run your experiment, be your own lab rat and question your relationship with knowledge.
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