It is not always prudent to defer our judgment to “experts”.
If their judgment had been accurate, then the Earth would be flat; Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction; and smoking would be good for you.
In 1961 Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram measured the willingness of ordinary people to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. This involved progressively electrocuting “students” who needed to be taught a lesson, when answering incorrectly.
Before conducting the experiment, psychologists believed that only one per cent of “teachers” would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage, and those that would be prepared to do so would be psychopaths. Amazingly, two-thirds of the “teachers” were willing to defer their judgment to the “expert”, and electrocuted the “students to death” — these were psychological normal people, not psychopaths! “Teachers” desired to be cooperative and believed that they could off-set their responsibility onto the expert, as they had a white coat; authoritarian demeanor and auspices of a respected organisation.
I choose to not always defer my judgment to the “experts”. Let us all take responsibly for our actions. If you have researched fluoride and choose to consume it, I completely respect your right to do so. You are free to your beliefs, and to act on your beliefs, just as I am free to my beliefs of not consuming fluoride, and to act on my beliefs. I have absolutely no intension of using force to administer you a drug, please have the courteously of not using force to administer a drug to me and others who do not want to consume fluoride.
David Graham
