Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 12, 1993 TAG: 9305120257
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Just what, Rifkin wanted to know, is an "adjusted gross basis?"
The IRS expert explained that it was a "gross basis that has been adjusted."
"He treated me like an idiot," Rifkin remembers. "I felt like hanging up the phone."
But he didn't. Rifkin wasn't going to give in just because this guy was supposed to be an expert. He ignored the IRS guy's verbal smoke, and kept asking questions. Within a few minutes, Rifkin had a real answer.
Rifkin succeeded because - while he knows nothing about tax law - he knows something about experts.
Over the past few years, he says, he's learned that being accepted as an expert has as much to do with manipulating symbols and language as it does with knowledge, training or experience. He says experts operate in much the same way as witch doctors or the Wizard of Oz.
You might call William Rifkin an expert on experts.
Rifkin teaches in the Program on Social and Organizational Learning at George Mason University in Fairfax. His specialty is the study of experts and the games they play to gain your trust - and deference.
Rifkin was enough of a "science nerd" in high school to build his own working hovercraft. He went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a physics degree.
From there he worked as an engineer for a California high-tech firm. He became interested in how experts communicate their ideas to nonexperts after seeing the two brothers who ran the company constantly clash. One was a free-wheeling inventor and the other was a practical manager-type. There seemed to be a wall of miscommunication between them.
Rifkin eventually earned a Ph.D. from Stanford after studying sociology, culture, language and education.
He goes about his work with a sense of humor about the people he's studying - and about himself. He warns you that he's using some of the same techniques that other experts use as they try to carve out their own niches of authority.
Actually, he doesn't like to use the word expert. He believes "specialist" is a more accurate term.
Rifkin describes the process of deciding who gets "expert status" as a negotiation between the wanna-be expert and the nonexpert.
Unfortunately, it's often an exchange where things are weighted in favor of the would-be expert. Society teaches us it's rude to interrupt experts or question their authority. "Well," we often say, "you're the expert."
Rifkin doesn't want people to discount experts or what they have to say. But he'd like people to be more skeptical - so they won't blindly follow experts simply because they have an air of authority about them.
He's developed a list of tongue-in-cheek tips on how to be an expert - which actually can be used as guidelines for spotting experts and the games they play.
ESTABLISH A SEPARATE STATUS
Get a degree with lots of initials - M.A., M.S., L.L.D., Ph.D. That allows you to join an elite community of specialists. You've probably learned something from your education, Rifkin says, but in the end "degrees just mean you've been processed by this institution with these people."
Doctors, scientists, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics, you name it, all have ways of setting themselves apart from nonexperts.
In the lawyer's office, the person behind the desk always has the swivel chair. In the doctor's office, the doctor gets to move around. The patient has to sit on one of those little tables - and wear a skimpy gown.
WEAR A COSTUME. USE PARAPHERNALIA
Witch doctors do this. So do Westernized experts. They use the tie and briefcase or the white lab coat to signal their elite status. One reason erstwhile presidential candidate Ross Perot uses pointers and charts may be to signal that he's just as good as the so-called policy experts in Washington.
One summer when he worked in a lawn-mower repair shop, Rifkin discovered one of the secrets of the mechanics trade: the rag. Always keep one in your back pocket. It's a signal you're an experienced mechanic.
DISPLAY SKILL WITH TECHNICAL LANGUAGE - AND A FLAIR FOR SPEECH-MAKING
Just like a figure skater, you're being graded both on technical proficiency and artistic performance.
Study how sports announcers try to make things sound more important than they are. For example, an expert might explain: "Ground water follows the topography in this hydrogeological regime." In other words: Water flows downhill around here.
Rename things so the new words don't give you any more information than the old ones.
Know how to pronounce hard words. Computer specialists say "programmer" in a special, quicker way. It shows they possess special knowledge. When Rifkin hears somebody talk like that, he thinks, "Ahhh. I know which tribe this person comes from."
MAKE THE PROCEEDINGS SOLEMN
"If you go to greet a lawyer, he probably won't have joy buzzer in his hand," Rifkin says. "Somebody who is joking around too much makes you feel uneasy."
Public officials use rituals - such as the reading of the minutes of the last meeting - to emphasize the seriousness of what they've doing.
GAIN THE CENTER OF ATTENTION
"Using a microphone is good. Hold a press conference. Be sure to interrupt other people."
FORCE THE CLIENT TO COMPETE FOR YOUR ATTENTION
Be impossible to reach on the phone. Make people wait for you.
"It's funny," Rifkin says. "A doctor can make you wait 45 minutes. A plumber can make you wait three or four hours. It annoys us but we know everybody waits for the plumber."
MAKE DEFERENCE TOWARD YOU SEEM NATURAL
Act intimidating. "Do whatever it takes so that people feel they have to be polite to you."
Make sure the receptionist refers you by title: "Dr. Smith will see you now," rather than "Bob will see you."
Often the doctor calls patients by their first names or by nicknames nobody else uses. Rifkin's name is William. He goes by Willy, but doctors always call him Bill. Maybe, he says, it's a Freudian slip: "They're thinking too far ahead."
Despite such chumminess, though, it's often the most abusive doctors who are looked on with the greatest awe. "When you have power, you get to be rude to people."
Being rude emphasizes the difference between the expert and the nonexpert.
Rifkin says the movie image of the mad scientist reflects some of our skepticism - and fears - about experts. "But being afraid of somebody doesn't mean you're not going to submit to them."
DEVISE EXPLANATIONS THAT RESIST REFUTING
Be consistent. It doesn't mean you're right. It just means you've ignored anything that doesn't fit.
Life is messy. "The only thing that does not have contradictions in it is fiction," Rifkin says.
Eyewitnesses to the same event may come up with very different memories about what happened. But to win their cases in court, lawyers often labor to weave a seamless, consistent tale that makes sense to the jury.
If you get caught in a contradiction, turn it around. Call it the exception that proves the rule.
Or blame it on something else: a statistical quirk, or a malfunction in the equipment.
Witch doctors do the same thing. A diviner will give poison to a chicken. If it lives, the answer is Yes. If it dies, No. The witch doctor will try several times until he gets the answer that supports his prediction. If the prediction doesn't bear out, he'll blame it on a bad batch of poison.
INTERRUPT PEOPLE
Introduce more new topics than anyone else. It's a mark of privilege. Don't let anybody else interrupt you.
And remember: "It's your prerogative, when cornered on a technical point, to make suggestions about where to eat lunch."
SUPPORT YOUR OPINIONS WITH "WAR STORIES"
Be vivid. Be entertaining. Ronald Reagan taught us the persuasive power of colorful anecdotes.
Society tends to value book learning over experience, but sharing a personal story is a great way to drive home complex technical points.
If you're a doctor, tell your patient about cases you've treated in the past. That impresses them.
HELP DECISION-MAKING BY NARROWING THE CHOICES
Steer people in one direction. Giving them choices takes away some of your power. "Does your doctor give you the choice of three prescriptions?"
Be sure to remind them of the consequences of ignoring your advice.
AVOID BLAME
Protect yourself when your advice turns out to be bad. Lawyers and doctors buy malpractice insurance.
If all else fails, hide behind the cloak of ritual and tradition. Say: "I've been through these steps with 10,000 other people and nine times out of 10 it works. So therefore it cannot be my fault."
A BIT OF ADVICE FOR NONEXPERTS
Rifkin has fun with experts. But he says how we choose our experts - who we listen to - is an important issue. It shapes the future of our society. Take the recent debate over health-care reform, for example.
On a more personal level, our choices of experts affect how we spend our money and raise our children. Let's face it: From time to time, you have to rely on the advice or services of experts.
When you choose, Rifkin says, ask questions. Shop around. And try to develop sensible criteria for your choices.
Once, when Rifkin wanted to get his clutch fixed, he called around to several garages. He finally found a mechanic who gave him the answers he wanted. They developed a good rapport over the phone. Rifkin decided that's where he was going to take his car.
But afterward, he had second thoughts. After all, he thought, being able to talk well on the phone doesn't mean someone's going to be a good mechanic.
The best way to evaluate a mechanic, Rifkin decided, was to talk to people who have been customers of the garage over a long period of time.
"The important thing is to reflect on what you're doing," Rifkin says. "Are you just responding to somebody pushing your buttons? Or are you considering what you really want?"
by CNB