Experts and Expertise. Interdisciplinary Issues Introduction

Today the role of experts is pervasive in the everyday life of both individuals and communities. At the collective level, governments and groups routinely delegate scientific, economic and technological decisions to experts; expert witnesses play a key role in legal contexts, and the evaluation of academic and scientific institutions is demanded to expert peers. At the individual level, each of us defers to experts for the correct understanding of problems, issues, concepts and word meanings in some domains, and trusts experts blindly at least in some cases. Finally, both communities and individuals face the problem of what to do when experts disagree