Mentors Matter Monday, February 20, 2023
“The cobbler should not judge above his sandal.” - Pliny the Elder
Professional Expert vs Amateur
I am professionally educated and experienced only in medicine; and within medicine, only the small subset of emergency medicine in which I have an ongoing thirty year career. I am an amateur in everything else I do.
This distinction between professionally educated and experienced in an occupation and being an amateur, is crucial. A professional expert reads everything in their small field, most of which they know repeatedly very well, and a lot of which they frankly disagree. The professional expert does not choose what to read—the field of expertise chooses it for them. The professional expert is acutely aware in humility and sometimes despair, of the gaps and failures of their small special dissected field. They know the defects because at the highest levels, they live with them. I am a professional expert only in emergency medicine— that does not make me “a medical expert” in all medical fields. For instance, in the field of medical oncology, I am not much more than an amateur. And if I humbly understand that, I will quickly recognize my need to call the professional expert in medical oncology when I am confronted with a dilemma in the care of a patient with cancer. And for that matter, I might call the oncologist regardless simply out of professional courtesy, knowing that out of humility she or he might share something that I did not even know that I did not know, not to shame me but in order to heal the patient we are taking care of together. And certainly you should know for the sake of this collection of writings that in the non-medical fields of history, philosophy, sociology, and even statistics, I am thoroughly an amateur at the most base level.
An amateur can be very bright, and read a lot. An amateur is occasionally so bright and well read, that they are utterly convinced of their own ideas, and prove completely convincing to others —to the point of sounding either prophetic or disturbingly arrogant. But amateurs at all levels choose what they want to read. And they mostly choose and finish what they like to read. While most people may not have a problem with this distinction between experienced professionals and amateurs as it relates to a particular field of study or a skilled craft, this may be a more difficult concept for some when it comes to their own body and mind as the subject. In areas of health, wisdom, and wellness in American life, there is a western romantic notion that the individual is their own expert by personal experience. Historically, particularly among conservative and more rural Americans, there is even a deep distrust of an external academic authority resulting in an anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism which is viewed as more spontaneously natural and authentic.
Confirmation Bias
The problem with amateurs (which includes myself) is what we call in science, “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is thinking and believing in ways that confirm what we emotionally already wanted to be true. We are guilty of confirmation bias not only in areas of education and skill, we exhibit it even more in thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. Confirmation bias causes the individual to miss the target of observable fact, much less truth. This bias can be hidden even from ourselves.
This bias, can be explicit or implicit. The correction of bias in science and medicine is for the purpose of finding the right life-giving and life-sustaining therapy. Sin in religion is like bias in scientific thinking. You may not be fully aware of it. And the goal is not proving someone wrong, but rather to find the true proven path we walk together to heal. The priest fulfills a similar function as a physician. Both are experts in healing called to relationship in overseeing the person, soul and body. But it all begins with humility of what you have a knowledgable expertise in and what you do not. The cobbler should not be speaking of things with any certainty above the sandal. And the cardiologist or neuroradiologist should not be speaking of novel ideas in virology and vaccine technology. Humility and silence are the beginning steps of knowledge. Good medical science begins with the disbelief of yourself.