I have been listening to this podcast called Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal & Society, and it's really reminding me of the main reason that you should listen to experts. It's not because of the reason media usually shows, them having encyclopedic knowledge of their subject (though many do have that) it's their ability to sort.
This podcast demonstrates that ability really well because sex scandals tend to be used as propaganda, so it's difficult to tell if they are true or not. The host will ask the historian guest, "Did he have sex with men?" and the guest will say something like, "Well four sources say so, but three were written after his death and the one from his lifetime was from a dude who REALLY hated him, so I'm going to conclude no."
That is what an expert can do, that we've perhaps forgotten about because we have so much information at our fingertips, an expert can tell which information is good & valid vs. bad & unreliable. An expert can sort much faster than a layman because they've been doing it for years.
It's the same for my field. Some things I am absolutely sure are wrong, like if someone says "We only use 10% of our brains." No, we use all of it and I can even tell you what every part does. But other claims, if I see a news article claiming something that sounds fishy, I can read the research article behind it and judge the validity of the source. I can sort. I know which parameters to sort on. That was the entire point of my education and it was pounded into my head.
Knowledge isn't enough. Researching isn't enough because if you don't know how to sort you'll just be led astray down dangerous rabbit holes. That is why experts are so important.
