Here are my TWO simple rules for deciding who's an expert (both during a pandemic and in general)!

I don't think we should automatically believe people who say they're experts but we also shouldn't automatically dismiss them either.

I have 2 simple criteria for identifying experts:

1. Am I confident that this person has spent a lot of time formally thinking and reading about the topic?

2. Am I confident this person has spent lots of time gathering direct real world experience about the topic?

Why would I trust an epidemiologist during an global epidemic?

1. They spend all their time thinking about epidemics

2. Many epidemiologists have participated in and successfully managed epidemics in the real world (HIV, Ebola, etc)

3. Many epidemiologists are also virologists (CDC etc) and have worked directly with viruses and virus spread.

For all these reasons, I would trust epidemiologists to successfully get me through a pandemic.

Would I be skeptical of the expertise of an economist, a physicist or a technologist who started thinking about epidemiology at the start of 2020? Yes! For one simple reason. They have likely spent much less time doing all of those three things I mentioned.

So, that's it. My two simple rules for deciding who's an expert. Thanks for coming to my TED talk!