Yes, hubris-- and I think that people with moderate LOG are probably the most susceptible to that particular blind spot. They seem to all believe that an afternoon at Google University makes them instant experts. Those of us with the best research skills are the MOST prone to it, honestly. I've done it myself.
Or they regard ANYONE who embraces the mantle of "expert" as being more or less equivalent, and at the same time, falling prey to confirmation bias and the bias of risk perception. I think that the curve for both phenomena is parabolic.
I see evidence of that in the blog post, truthfully. It's an anecdote being USED as data. Glad the outcome was good, but fundamental attribution error, much?
I do also think that there is a differential there in two ends of the "very bright people" spectrum. This is something that my DH and I have been discussing a lot recently-- that is, that some of the very bright people that we know view the world through a lens that doesn't seem...
well--
it doesn't seem empirically based, but belief/experientially- based.
Those people in particular are very prone to placing anecdote on an equal footing with data. In fact, I've not encountered too many of them that actually comprehend completely that there is a fundamental difference between the two things.
Then there is correlation fallacy, which MOST people are quite vulnerable to when considering anecdotes. What is a bit scary is that I've known quite a number of healthcare professionals in this category. They know what they know because it FEELS true to them, and to them-- that is the same thing as BEING true. I tend to avoid healthcare professionals like that, for whatever that is worth. Not that I think they are bad, precisely, but my worldview and theirs is fundamentally incompatible, and it's only going to lead to trouble.
Also, most of us-- and by 'us' I mean both the population at large and also us here-- simply aren't equipped to be "experts" at whatever we turn out attention toward. Only those with dangerous arrogance actually believe that they are.
I'm not cut out to be a theologian, artist, or historian. I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that I could be. I dabble, and it's fun. But I'm not very well-equipped to swim in the deep end there. KWIM?
