Out of the Box

First, a word on experts. ‘Leave it to the experts’ we hear. Well, that’s nice – in this field, or I should say paddock, of public health nutrition, you are no doubt an expert. I admit to a cosy glow when I am introduced as an expert. But what’s an expert worth? Here’s the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, on the great debate on leadership in Athens at the time of Plato and Aristotle. The established side said that: ‘An expert is a person who produces important knowledge and has important skills. His knowledge and his skills must not be questioned or changed by non-experts. They must be taken over by society in exactly the form suggested by the experts’. But as the dissident side pointed out: ‘Experts arriving at their results often restrict their vision. They do not study all phenomena but only those in a special field’. Paul Feyerabend, a dissident, adds: ‘It would therefore be foolish to regard expert ideas as “true” or as “real” . . . without further studies that go beyond expert limits. And it would be equally foolish to introduce them into society without having made sure that the professional aims of the experts agree with the aims of society’. This helps to explain what I try to do here. Wars may be won by clever uses of technology (or overwhelming force) but war is not just a technical issue. Nor is public health; nor is nutrition.