Adding  couple more: Another one: Why do science and health reporters lack background in their subject?

Troy Farah is the “Science and Health Reporter” for Salon.com. He has a BA in journalism and won an award for article on why people in Phoenix should be dancing at concerts.

Meredith Broussard is labeled an “AI Expert” but her LinkedIn page hides her degrees, saying only a “BA” from Harvard and MFA from Columbia (no subjects listed).

The problem: such individuals lack the expertise to skeptically question true experts. Historically, this is why reporters defer to most anyone with a PhD (often in any subject!) It enables reporters to be spun – and is a well known issue in journalism.

By comparison, Axios science reporter Alison Snyder has a degree in chemical engineering and a Masters in botany and evolutionary biology, which gives significant credibility to her science reporting.

By comparison, my own experience is that when I asked questions and raised issues (all of which history proved spot on and correct), I was told, in so many words, “But Lawrence has a Stanford MBA and you don’t, so why should I believe you?”[1] It’s called credential-ism and it warps people’s views of the world and into believing something is true based on who said it, not on the truth of a fact, or logic. As Bertrand Russell noted, a fact is true regardless of who says it. Arguments, he said, rest on facts and logic, not who makes the argument.

Literally – every job I ever held had examples like the above – where I was told my lack of a graduate degree meant I was not permitted to hold a position, or my perspective, even if correct, was down weighted. Yet in journalism, it is routine for reporters to have no relevant training in the fields they report on.

[1] That was literally the day I decided I would earn an MBA, which I began two years later. Still later I went on to complete an MS in software engineering, and nearly as many additional graduate credits in medical informatics and computer security.

UPDATE

And another one.  Harri Weber is the Senior Climate Writer at Tech Crunch. From her LinkedIn bio, she has no college degree, but had studied Design and Technology at the School of Design – The New School, for a year. She did not graduate. She is now the “Expert” “Senior climate writer” at Tech Crunch.