And I can even imagine finding a case somewhere where a non-expert rationally arrived at the correct answer when 95% of the experts are wrong—though I’ve been unable to actually find such a case.
That’s because you only looked at contemporary examples and demanded that the experts be unambiguously wrong. This process is going to fail because even if the expert consensus is wrong, it has at least had many smart people devote a lot of energy to rationalizing it.
Given that many people here are anime fans, I have an example, sort of. Back when Media Blasters had manufacturing errors that caused many of their disks to have mono audio, fans complained and Media Blasters claimed that their experts analyzed the disks and found nothing wrong with them.
Needless to say, the disks did have mono audio.
Of course, that’s only sort of an example because it’s just as likely that the company was simply lying about having consulted experts.
Or perhaps the company shopped around for some expert opinions it liked.
In another thread, I mentioned that there are three threshold criteria for trusting expert opinion:
Before you can trust the expert consensus, you need to determine (1) what the proper class of experts is; (2) what exactly the issue in controversy is; and (3) how the experts actually stack up on that issue.
In the situation you describe, (3) does not appear to be satisfied.
That’s because you only looked at contemporary examples and demanded that the experts be unambiguously wrong. This process is going to fail because even if the expert consensus is wrong, it has at least had many smart people devote a lot of energy to rationalizing it.
Given that many people here are anime fans, I have an example, sort of. Back when Media Blasters had manufacturing errors that caused many of their disks to have mono audio, fans complained and Media Blasters claimed that their experts analyzed the disks and found nothing wrong with them.
Needless to say, the disks did have mono audio.
Of course, that’s only sort of an example because it’s just as likely that the company was simply lying about having consulted experts.
Or perhaps the company shopped around for some expert opinions it liked.
In another thread, I mentioned that there are three threshold criteria for trusting expert opinion:
In the situation you describe, (3) does not appear to be satisfied.