
The Dark Side of Expertise - signa11
https://lwn.net/Articles/809556/
======
jkingsbery
> They then told the students to go up the hallway to a different room where
> there would be another test. What the students didn't know was that the test
> was actually in the hallway; the time it took each participant to walk down
> the hall was measured. It turned out that the students who had been exposed
> to the "elderly words" walked more slowly down the hall. Attendees might be
> inclined to call that "absolute crap", Brady suggested, but it is not, it is
> repeatable and even has a name, "the Florida effect", because Florida was
> used as one of the words associated with the elderly.

I haven't ready widely on this, but from what little I have, most attempts at
reproducing this and other priming experiments have failed.

(see, e.g., [https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-...](https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-
wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/),
[https://replicationindex.com/category/priming/](https://replicationindex.com/category/priming/)
and [https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/reproducibility-
crisis...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/reproducibility-crisis-the-
plot-thickens))

~~~
mjevans
I postulate that if this is a true cause/effect it depends on words having a
strong association to the intended concept, and that concept being significant
to the individuals.

Further, I would postulate that the selection of study participants at that
time, and the construction of the test, were very well matched. Today there is
probably greater cultural diversity and comingling, and may also there may be
less unconscious association of those words to slow.

------
kerkeslager
This was pretty ramble-y and pulled in some pretty unrelated examples.

* We never get a clear answer for why the Civic Center Engineers got the inputs wrong, so we can't conclude that it was because of their expertise.

* With the firefighters, there's a pretty easy proximal explanation, which again is not their expertise misleading them: panic. If anything, the solution to the problem shows that expertise was the solution to the problem, not the cause of it: by adding running without packs to their expertise in a concrete way, they were able to override panic.

* With the priming examples, I can see how this might be related, but the only example which actually involves expertise leading them astray is the baseball example. But this priming research, contrary to what's claimed in the article, _isn 't_ reproduce-able. And even if it were, these sorts of lateral thinking exercises have pretty limited applicability: detectives or theoretical physicists use a high degree of lateral thinking, but many careers don't, and I didn't get those examples from the article, I had to come up with them myself: that hardly speaks to this being an insightful article. And ultimately, it's unclear whether expertise leads detectives or theoretical physicists astray: surely part of gaining expertise in a field that requires a lot of lateral thinking involves building the skill of putting aside preconceptions. Again, I don't think we can conclude that expertise is the problem: it may be the solution.

Overall, this topic could be interesting, but this isn't an insightful article
on it.

~~~
mcguire
You are entirely missing the point in your first two points:

* The issue here isn't that the inputs were wrong, it's that the experts could not (or would not, if you don't want to be generous) accept that the structure was under-strength in spite of multiple reports; the believed their calculations rather than their lying eyes.

* There is no particular evidence that the firefighters panicked. Whether or not they did, though, they did what their training led them to believe was their only choice: keep their equipment and try to reach the top of the ridge. The foreman was the only one to realize either that the training wasn't going to work or that they had another option.

Do you have a great deal of expertise in this area?

~~~
kerkeslager
> The issue here isn't that the inputs were wrong, it's that the experts could
> not (or would not, if you don't want to be generous) accept that the
> structure was under-strength in spite of multiple reports; the believed
> their calculations rather than their lying eyes.

How does this support the conclusion that they were misled by their expertise?
There are many possible explanations here.

> There is no particular evidence that the firefighters panicked. Whether or
> not they did, though, they did what their training led them to believe was
> their only choice: keep their equipment and try to reach the top of the
> ridge. The foreman was the only one to realize either that the training
> wasn't going to work or that they had another option.

There is no particular evidence that the firefighters were misled by their
expertise, either.

If anything wasn't the foreman's realization arguably due to his superior
expertise?

> Do you have a great deal of expertise in this area?

In the area of basic logic, such as figuring out whether evidence supports
conclusions? I suppose you could say I do, although I wouldn't claim anything
special.

------
sampo
> "the Florida effect"

This 1996 study by John Bargh, using only 30 psychology undergraduates as test
subjects, is now more known as the prime example of bad psychology, done with
too small sample size and dubious statistical methods. This study is at the
very center of the replication crisis in psychology. That the conference
presenter has not followed at all what has happened in psychology in the past
8 years, erodes the scientific credibility of the presentation.

[https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-...](https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-
wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/)

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2012/03...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2012/03/10/failed-
replication-bargh-psychology-study-doyen/)

[https://replicationindex.com/2019/03/17/raudit-
bargh/](https://replicationindex.com/2019/03/17/raudit-bargh/)

[https://www.nature.com/news/disputed-results-a-fresh-blow-
fo...](https://www.nature.com/news/disputed-results-a-fresh-blow-for-social-
psychology-1.12902)

[https://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureate-challenges-
psycho...](https://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureate-challenges-
psychologists-to-clean-up-their-act-1.11535)

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03755-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03755-2)

------
JackFr
Priming with respect to the Florida effect is a famously not replicable
result. It's not a real effect. I'm more sympathetic to the word game example,
yet it's not obvious how that translates to anything beyond.

With respect to the Hartford Civic Center, as always, it's a little more
complicated than that. Yes the architects stood by their calculations, but
this was more of a process issue than hubris. Despite the new techniques used,
the plans were subject to peer review. Additionally the construction was not
fully according to plan. Weaker struts were actually used than called for in
the design, and that's on the construction manager rather than the architect.

~~~
madhadron
> Weaker struts were actually used than called for in the design, and that's
> on the construction manager rather than the architect.

I was wondering if something like that was the case. It's common practice
among structural engineers that they will not inspect the building because
then they are liable if they don't catch deviations in construction from what
they made calculations for.

------
js2
The civic center arena roof collapse is similar to the FIU pedestrian bridge
collapse in that the engineers trusted their calculations over physical
evidence of imminent failure:

> At 9 a.m. on March 15, a university employee heard a loud "whip cracking"
> sound while under the bridge span, waiting for a red traffic light. At the
> same time, the design-build team met for about two hours at the construction
> site to discuss the cracks discovered on March 13. Representatives from both
> FIU and FDOT were present. The FIGG lead engineer's conclusions were that
> the structural integrity of the bridge was not compromised and that there
> were no safety concerns raised by the presence of the crack.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_Universi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse)

Fortunately for NYC, when William LeMessurier received a phone call about
Citicorp Center from a student, he went back and re-ran some calculations and
realized that quartering winds would put his building under more stress than
he originally realized. But no harm, that would be handled by the extra safety
factor built into his calculations. Unless it turned out other changes had
been made during construction he wasn't originally aware of. Well, I won't
give away the whole story:

[http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm](http://people.duke.edu/~hpgavin/cee421/citicorp1.htm)

[http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/12/08/citicorp-centre-
to...](http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/12/08/citicorp-centre-tower-
failure-averted/)

------
rossdavidh
I was glad to see that the comments on the webpage provided a link
([https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-...](https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-
wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/)) to a summary of how priming
research has been cast into doubt in recent years. Any talk, article, or
premise that uses priming experiments to explain something, is a red flag for
me. I'm not saying none of it really works, but I am saying that it is clear
that something more complex is going on than we think, and many of the priming
experiments, at a minimum, have been misinterpreted (and in some cases are
just totally unreplicable).

------
WhompingWindows
I don't buy this headline at all, the author does not prove there are actual
experts behind this story at all...

The primary story used here is that a sagging arena roof was consistently
deemed safe by "engineers" (no proof of expertise provided) based upon their
calculations...and this is somehow a "dark side" of expertise? It reads much
more like ineptitude; that'd be like any coder here constantly ignoring
terrible performance and numerous bugs and claiming their architecture is just
fine.

~~~
mjw1007
There's also an unexplained leap from "the calculations are correct" to "we
should proceed as planned even though it's sagging when it shouldn't".

Even if the engineers were infinitely arrogant and assumed nothing could
possibly be wrong with the design, you'd expect them to react by saying "you
must be building it wrong or using substandard materials", or something.

~~~
kerkeslager
This is the same annoying problem I found with Malcolm Gladwell's _Blink_. He
draws this conclusion that we can trust our first impressions, but it's really
unclear how he comes to that conclusion: some of his evidence comes to no
conclusion, and some of it directly contradicts that conclusion.

------
lonelappde
This is a write-up of a pseudoscience gobbledygook just-so stories that don't
do justice to the complexities of the catastrophes they draw trite morals
from.

Here's a more thoughtful write up of the Civic center collapse, attributed
largely to a large project with diffusion of responsibility and no one
empowered the fix the problems they were held responsible for. [https://eng-
resources.uncc.edu/failurecasestudies/building-f...](https://eng-
resources.uncc.edu/failurecasestudies/building-failure-cases/hartford-civic-
center/)

------
cbanek
Just another study about expertise and how it can maybe not be beneficial:

[https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1797](https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1797)

From "Physician age and outcomes in elderly patients in hospital in the US:
observational study":

> Physicians’ skills, however, can also become outdated as scientific
> knowledge, technology, and clinical guidelines change. Incorporating these
> changes into clinical practice is time consuming and can at times be
> overwhelming. Interest in how quality of care evolves over a physician’s
> career has revived in recent years, with debates over how best to structure
> programs for continuing medical education, including recent controversy in
> the US regarding maintenance of certification programs.

> Within the same hospital, patients treated by older physicians had higher
> mortality than patients cared for by younger physicians, except those
> physicians treating high volumes of patients.

Basically, expertise can change, and if you don't keep up, you may be
following outdated advice (which might not useful or even possibly harmful). I
feel like the "dropping your equipment" is a part of this. You need to know
the right tool for the right job, and sometimes doing the same thing for years
might lead you down the wrong path.

~~~
grawprog
>I feel like the "dropping your equipment" is a part of this. You need to know
the right tool for the right job, and sometimes doing the same thing for years
might lead you down the wrong path.

This happened at my last job. The company I worked for hadn't really changed
their methods for about 7 years. Jobs went slow, we worked ridiculous amounts
of overtime and mistakes were a regular part of the job. Over the years I
worked there, I went through everything, replaced a few processes, convinced
the owner to get newer more efficent tools and in the end, cut down the amount
of overtime we worked to almost nothing, reduced actual human operater times
on our machines from about 2-3 hours per run to 20 minutes, and reduced
mistakes and error from once a week or so to once in a blue moon.

The thing is, I didn't do anything amazing or groundbreaking, they could have
been operating that way for longer, they'd just found something that had
worked and never bothered to try and improve their system. I was left alone
for a few years and given free reign to do pretty much whatever I wanted, I
got sick of being overworked, so I started figuring out and changing whatever
I could to make things quicker, easier and better and it really didn't take
much in the end to make a drastic improvement.

------
nemo
TBH, if you gave me the list "dark," "shot," and "sun" I'm not sure I'd ever
think of "glasses" as a word that went with all three, since I still don't
really know what dark glasses are. I guess like dark sunglasses? Or maybe they
mean "through a glass darkly"? Priming is a real effect, but that example of
priming seems like it was poorly selected.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Priming is a real effect, but that example of priming seems like it was
> poorly selected.

Except maybe it's not even a real effect:
[https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-...](https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-
wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/)

~~~
nemo
Interesting! Thanks.

------
boublepop
A really entertaining read, even if I am left wondering how much of the
“Florida effect” stands up in the post reproducibility crisis times. And would
have liked more details on the calculation failures. I would guess that there
was perhaps less of a paycological bias and not a case of “you spend a large
amount on a computer, if the calculations are wrong you are fired” type
situation.

I’ve seen a lot of projects like this where pressure is built on project leads
for the chosen solution to be correct and not just for the goal to be reached,
which means you end up not looking at obvious alternatives because even if
that solves the project “your solution failed”.

Does anyone know of similar stories or books that deal with engineering
failures from a human psychology view?

Personally I’m reminded of the coverage of the Challanger disaster in “Ehat do
you care what other people think” by Richard Feynman, which I can highly
recommend reading if you haven’t already.

------
aaron695
This illogical talk is because of "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Chapter 4, which
Daniel Kahneman has since questioned.

[http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2012/10/05/kahneman-on-
th...](http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2012/10/05/kahneman-on-the-storm-of-
doubts-surrounding-social-priming-research/)

USCSB has great work place accident round ups (CGI, no gore). Of course
Expertise is what makes the workplace safer, it has no dark side.

Here's Murphy's law (If it's possible for it to happen, given enough time it
will, so don't allow it to physically happen wherever possible over processes)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tflm9mttAAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tflm9mttAAI)

------
dsego
A eerily similar case of an eruptive fire killing firefighters happened not so
long ago (in 2007) in Croatia.[1]

In this case it was most likely that the group of fire fighters did not have
time to reach a safety zone and escape. [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Croatian_coast_fires#Korn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Croatian_coast_fires#Kornati_tragedy)

[2]
[https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/FIVA08/FIVA0...](https://www.witpress.com/Secure/elibrary/papers/FIVA08/FIVA08036FU1.pdf)

------
anotherevan
Here's a link to the actual keynote if you want to watch it:

[https://youtu.be/Yv4tI6939q0](https://youtu.be/Yv4tI6939q0)

~~~
EducatorDirTeam
Thanks for this link

------
jaclaz
OT, but not much, if anyone is interested in how/why buildings/structures
stand up or collapse, there are a couple great books by Mario Salvadori:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Salvadori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Salvadori)

Why Buildings Stand Up (1980) and Why Buildings Fall Down (1992)

that are elementary enough to be read by anyone, without being at all
superficial.

------
fulafel
There's an interesting analysis of the Hartford collapse case here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080108024915/http://www.eng.ua...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080108024915/http://www.eng.uab.edu/cee/faculty/ndelatte/case_studies_project/Hartford%20Civic%20Center/hartford.htm)

------
0xff00ffee
Wow: I lived in CT in 1978 and it was a wicked snowstorm: 10 foot snow drifts
shut the coast down. I remember reading about the collapse in the New Haven
Register.

------
davidw
Somewhat of a counterpoint - I didn't make it all the way through this book,
but I think it has an interesting thesis:

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it
Matters: [https://amzn.to/3aHdIBB](https://amzn.to/3aHdIBB)

------
gapo
I am super surprised to see this on LWN. But it was a fascinating read.

------
JamesBarney
Just a note that priming has been a victim of the replication crisis.

