> If an expert can't give a convincing argument for their claims, why believe them?
IME, there's weak correlation between an expert's persuasiveness to a non-expert on one hand and the truth on the other hand:
* As an expert in my field, I could convince non-experts of almost anything; they have no idea what I'm talking about: Is it true? Have I omitted key things? Twisted other things? I wouldn't do that, but I've seen others do it. As an example we're all familiar with, U.S. intelligence officials have said, 'we're only collecting metadata about U.S. citizens, not content, so don't worry'. Obviously these experts knew that bulk collection of metadata is just as invasive as content, but it convinced the non-experts who don't understand that.
* In fields in which I'm non-expert, I used to think I could evaluate expert claims based on their persuasiveness. I was wrong - I was a mark, a sucker; I was the kind of person that propagandists, experts in persuasion, count on; my overestimation of my own powers, my ego, was my weakness. Eventually I observed a pattern: Later, when more facts came out or I knew more, what had been persuasive was actually BS. And a key point: It hadn't become wrong; it was always wrong and I had been conned by it. And what about those situations where I just never learned I was wrong, and the con continued indefinitely? In fields where I read a variety of experts and have some minor sophistication, I've learned that newspaper op-eds, which many find persuasive (people love to send them to me to read) are not infrequently dogs-t piled on a foundation of horses-t, with a few grains of truth sprinkled on top.
IME, the general wisdom that most people gain through years of painful experience is that persuasiveness has a small place, but far more you need to learn who to trust with what, who not to, and how to tell the difference. That's the only solution.
Obviously that's a risk, but so is blind faith in trusted experts. I don't think your examples really relate to this situation, because there wasn't a convincing expert argument that the housing bubble was economically sustainable, the arguments that it was unsustainable were simply ignored by trusted experts, for the most part. I mean, I think I found Nouriel Roubini through a post by Brad DeLong, but I don't think DeLong ever actually addressed his concerns.
