Source: Page 2: Scientists Explain Why President Obama’s Calls for Cooperation Meet Resistance – ABC News.

In this case, research suggests that how you ask someone to join a community effort may determine whether or not you are successful. Telling the world we need to work together sounds great, but may not be as effective as had been thought.

Or as the study put it, “…the frequent and pressing calls for Americans to recognize their shared fate and think collectively may result in unintended consequences of undermining the very motivation they seek to inspire.”

This quote is from an ABC News report that when President Obama asks for cooperation he will likely get the opposite just by asking. The title of the articles is  Why Americans Don’t Join Together: A Scientific Analysis. That certainly sounds like something we should pay attention to but in my expert opinion it is for the most part a fallacy. But then again the article does point out that we in the U.S. are a stubborn bunch who values their own opinion over everyone else’s and even over the facts. That I can understand.

If you watch any lawyer TV shows or read much about lawyers in the news you know that it is pretty easy to get an “expert” to testify in your favor on just about any topic. I think this is one of those topics. If you want to see the most glaring example of this just listen to the “expert” on guns and that is the CEO of the NRA. He will tell you that guns have nothing to do with the violence in our country. He will tell you that the solution to violence is to lock up the bad guys and arm everyone else. He will tell you that we need to put heavily armed guards in our schools and lock them down so crazy people can’t get in. Surely he is an expert since he is the CEO of a company? He is an expert isn’t he?

But then again I still remember all those CEOs who got up before congress and swore that cigarettes were not addictive! We just never seem to have learned our lessons about the experts. I guess we need and expert on experts to tell us how to think about that…

The lesson for today is don’t necessarily believe everything just because an “expert” says it is so…..