How GOOD are you OPTION

Opinion is a word that is often used carelessly today. It is used to refer to matters of taste, belief, and judgment. This casual use would probably cause little confusion if people didn't attach too much importance to opinion. Unfortunately, most do attach great importance to it. "I have as much right to my opinion as you to yours" and "Everyone's entitled to his or her opinion" are common expressions.

Is that label accurate? Is it intolerant to challenge another's opinion? It depends on what definition of opinion you have in mind. For example, you may ask a friend, "What do you think of the new Buicks?" And he may reply, "In my opinion, they're ugly." In this case, it would not only be intolerant to challenge his statement but foolish, for it's obvious that by opinion he means his personal preference, a matter of taste. And as the old saying goes, "It's pointless to argue about matters of taste."

However, consider this very different use of the term. A newspaper reports that the Supreme Court has delivered its opinion in a controversial case. Obviously the justices did not state their personal preferences, their mere likes and dislikes. They stated their considered judgment, painstakingly arrived at after thorough inquiry and deliberation.

Most of what is referred to as opinion falls somewhere between these two extremes. It is not an expression of taste. Nor is it careful judgment. Yet it may contain elements of both. It is a view or belief more or less casually arrived at, with or without examination of the evidence.

Is everyone entitled to his or her opinion? In a few country this is not only permitted but guaranteed. In Great Britain, for example, there is still a Flat Earth Society.

Being free to hold an opinion and express it does not, of course guarantee favorable consequences. Acting on our opinions carries even less assurance. We are free to act on our opinions only so long as, in doing so, we do not harm others.

OPINIONS CAN BE MISTAKEN

It is tempting to conclude that, if we are free to believe something, it must have some validity. That, however, is not the case. Free societies are based on the wise observation that people have an inalienable right to think their own thoughts and make their own choices. But this fact in no way suggests that the thoughts they think and the choices they make will be reasonable.

EVEN EXPERTS CAN BE WRONG

History records numerous occasions when the expert opinion has been the wrong opinion.

In ancient times the standard medical opinion was that headaches were caused by demons inside the skull. The accepted treatment ranged opening the skull to let the demons out to giving medicines derived from cow's brain and goat dung. (The American Indians preferred beaver testicles.)

When the idea of inoculating people against such diseases as smallpox first arrived in the colonies in the early 1900s, most authorities regarded it as nonsense. Among them were Benjamin Franklin and a number of the men who later founded Harvard Medical School. Against the authorities stood a relatively unknown man who didn't even have a medical degree, Zabdiel Boylston, whose opinion was proved right? Not the experts' but Zabdiel Boylston's.

In 1890 a Nobel prize-winning bacteriologist, Dr. Robert Koch, reported that he had found a substance that would cure tuberculosis. When it was injected into patients, though, it was found to cause further illness and even death.

In 1904 psychologist G. Stanley Hall expressed his professional opinion that when women engage in strenuous mental activity, particularly with men, they experience a loss of mammary function and interest in motherhood, as well as decreased fertility. If they subsequently have children, the children will tend to be sickly.

Between 1919 and 1922 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City bought seventeen gold vessels that experts determined were authentic treasures from a 3,500-year-old Egyptian tomb. In 1982 they were discovered to be twentieth-century fakes.

In 1928 a drug called thorotrast was developed and used to outline certain organs of the body so that clearer X rays could be taken. Nineteen years later, doctors learned that even small doses of the drug caused cancer.

KINDS OF ERROR

There are four general kinds of error that can corrupt anyone's opinions. Francis Bacon classified them as follows: (1) errors or tendencies to error common among all people by virtue of their being human, (2) errors that come from human communication and the limitations of language, (3) errors in the general fashion or attitude of an age, (4) errors posed to an individual by a particular situation.

Some people, of course, are more prone to errors than others. John Locke observed that these people fall into three groups. He described them as follows:

Those who seldom reason at all, but think and act as those around them do – parents, neighbors, the clergy, or anyone else they admire and respect.

Those who are determined to let passion rather than reason govern their lives. Those people are influenced only by reasoning that supports their prejudices.

Those who sincerely follow reason, but lack sound, overall good sense, and so do not look at all sides of an issue. They tend to talk with one type of person, read one type of book, and so are exposed to only one viewpoint.

To Locke's list we should add one more type – people who never bother to reexamine an opinion once it has been formed. These people are often the most error-prone of all, for they forfeit all opportunity to correct mistaken opinions when new evidence arises.