Yes, I've absolutely lost trust in doctors and physicians. My wife suffered a minor knee injury while we were trail running last year. She went to a specialist (orthopedic surgeon) who performed an x-ray and told her he couldn't see any damage. He formally diagnosed the problem as chondromalacia patellae ("runner's knee") and sent her on her way with a cortisone shot and a referral to a physical therapy practice.
As it happens, the cortisone shot significantly increased her discomfort and pain pretty much permanently. She was warned it might be more painful for two weeks, but she still has to ice it regularly. She also left the physical therapist she was referred to because the attentiveness and level of care was lacking (she was often left with an intern, and there was no itinerary for weekly progression to recovery). She didn't see any progress on twice weekly appointments.
This left her pretty despondent, unfortunately. It wasn't until I went to several running subreddits and asked for strong recommendations for results-oriented physical therapists that we found a practice where she's actually seeing progress. After nearly a year she's just now starting to run again. Throughout this entire process, neither of us have felt particularly cared for or listened to. We're fortunate that we can spend the money on a place that doesn't accept any insurance just to see really strong care.
What really drove me up a wall personally is that this level of expertise does exist. Professional athletes routinely recover from far more significant injuries because they're under the proper direction and recovery regimen. But that kind of expertise isn't easily available even if you know to look for it. Instead people get shuffled around from one crappy doctor's office to another by their uninterested insurance agency, until they gradually lose hope and stop bothering. Then they end up in they're late 30s and 40s unable to exercise because they got a bad whatever in their 20s that no one cared enough to help them through.
It's also difficult to trust a profession which appears to systematically disrespect clients' time. This past week I had a morning appointment with my doctor. Despite arriving on time I didn't actually get to see him until two hours later. There's nothing I can really do about it, because I can't find any indication it will be like this until after experiencing it with a doctor. It's not as though this is an unsolved problem. Restaurants routinely plan to have reservations available on time so they're ready for guest arrival.
I can recognize that doctors have much more domain knowledge and experience than I do. But that makes it even more grievous when I have to pick up their slack in patient care. The level of accountability and care seems to be completely hit or miss.
EDIT: Thinking about it more, the article's premise about the trustworthiness of "closed-system experts" seems to be incorrect across the board. As an example, I once had a malfunctioning air conditioner that survived through two summers and three different mechanics. Apparently fixing a Honda Civic's air conditioner was too complex a task for their expertise. These days I just take my car to the dealership so I know it's fixed. I don't even mind overpaying as long as I don't have to deal with the anxiety of repeated disappointment. I can't imagine the desperation and anxiety of those who are at the mercy of these kinds of experts for much more serious problems. That kind of frustration is how you create supervillains.
You're really comparing the availability of a fleet minimally skilled servers and a moderately skilled line cooks, to a single medical doctor's appointment?
As a matter of fact yes, I am. I am unmoved by your implicit appeal to supply and demand.
I am also expressing a complete and utter lack of sympathy for their inability to respect patients' time. A doctor refusing to schedule me in the near term because he knows he can't fit me in is an unfortunate artifact of an inefficient healthcare system. But a doctor who knows this and still tries to fit me in - just so he can make me waste the better part of a morning waiting for an "appointment" and not even sit down when he finally does make it to see me - is entirely responsible for wasting my time.
Plus, it's well known that the supply of doctors is artificially restricted by the limited number of residency slots available each year. I can't have much sympathy on lack of doctors until the industry does something to stop strangling their own supply.
Can I ask you for the subreddits you used? (Or, if you're in the Bay Area, whom you're working with :)
I'm still suffering from a knee thing, and I've been through 3 diagnoses so far, with no results. A results-oriented PT would be a lovely person to meet. (Most PTs seem in no way able to adapt to any changes, or figure out which exercises help)
You are the second person in the past week who has invited me to email them here, and both times there wasn't actually an email address in the profile :)
Nevertheless I'm happy to answer here in case it helps anyone else: I asked on /r/running and /r/AdvancedRunning. The latter was the one that really gave strong recommendations. I'm not in the Bay Area (NYC), so I can't comment on that area.
I've had similar personal experiences to you and work in health care, and share your skepticism.
What I think people are skeptical of today is not necessarily expertise, but credentialism and the idea that expertise should supercede other considerations.
For example, there are a ton of unwarranted assumptions being made when when assumes that someone with an MD knows more about a topic than someone without one, or that someone board certified in an area is more qualified than someone not certified in that area, or that people certified in the area are equally skilled. We substitute weak indicators of skill or aptitude for the actual skill or aptitude, as the indicators are perfect when they are far from it.
Credentials like degrees or background should be treated for what they are: imperfect indicators of expertise. But now we have this situation where the experts are given control and monopolies over domains. In the US healthcare system, for example, MDs are given a strong monopoly over care, to the exclusion of other professions, but is this really warranted? Skepticism about academic economists having a strong role in politics are somewhat similar, in that sure, we should pay attention to them, but should they have quite as strong a role as they do?
I worry also about the tone of these discussions. The problem isn't so much with expertise, for example, it's how we use it or overuse it, or grant it monopoly, or imbue it with meaning it doesn't have.
I'm even skeptical of the linked pieces. The injection of mention of genetics in the one article is odd, for example, and to me the arguments reek of bigotry. Overall, their arguments seem to be "well, expertise is unwarranted, except for the fields I'm in, and we all know this expertise derives from my superior genetic endowment in combination with feedback. You'll see."
The problem with the open versus closed system argument is that even in very chaotic, unpredictable domains, there's some level of experience that is worthwhile. In fact, research suggests that one of the problems is that people tend to overestimate their ability to predict; part of the expertise in such domains should be to recognize this. This is legitimate expertise, recognizing the scope of unknown unknowns.
Similarly, it's also important to note that often in such fields, it's not just that things are difficult to predict, it's that we know they are difficult to predict precisely because so many reasonable, sophisticated things have been tried and failed. If anything, this points to the importance of expertise, because it suggests that very reasonable sophisticated ideas can still be wrong. The author likes to point to physics as an example of a closed system, which is ironic, because certain areas of physics are well outside our current level of understanding. Should we then, say reject physics as a domain of legitimate expertise because we don't currently have a good understanding of the nature of time?
I didn't conclude that. On the other hand, based on my experience I did conclude that the American healthcare system is designed to favor those who can afford to value their time over their money. It's not much comfort that a doctor has the right knowledge if they're too apathetic, overworked or inexperienced to get results that are any better than essential oils. At least with essential oils I know they won't work instead of being let down by a well-credentialed veneer of expertise.
Doctors have to earn it. It is my considered opinion that Doctors, on the whole, are really terrible at their jobs. It's been my experience that seeing a doctor is a complete waste of time unless you have an obvious medical issue you can't fix easily on your own, like a compound fracture. Otherwise you're better off consulting google and not being a hypochondriac.
Unfortunately, the prosperity of the "traditional medicine" industry is evidence that people don't even trust their surgeons/doctors.