Leery of experts.

First of all, I don't want to come across as a "Know Nothing."  I mean, I understand we need experts for specialized knowledge.  I certainly don't intent to imply that getting information from someone who knows more than me is a bad thing.

But I have to be careful. 

There are at least a couple of columnists, for instance, that I figure if I take the opposite tack, I'll be more likely right.  I'm not talking opinion columnists -- I'm talking expert columnists.  People who have expertise in certain subjects.

And yet they're wrong.  Just about every time.

There is one guy, Seth Godin, who I'm especially leery of.

Sometimes he's right, but sometimes I think he's completely off base.

Thing is -- he says it so well!

That's the danger, that he writes so well and so persuasively that he'll convince you of something that's wrong.

I think it's all part of the same process -- to make a column interesting, he needs an interesting slant.  I believe that is his goal -- an interesting column.

But the interesting slant can make him wrong sometimes and right sometimes.  It's interesting because it has an element of contrariness.  No one is interested if you write something about how blue the skies are -- but if you maintain the sky is actually orange, and you marshal your arguments in an interesting and persuasive way, well, that makes a column worth reading.

So how do you know if an expert is all wet?  Unfortunately, I think you have to know enough about the subject to know whether the guy is right or wrong.

Which comes back to doing your own research, trusting your own experience and instincts.

I've found experts who were incredibly helpful to me -- but usually I only understood how good they were after I'd already made many of the mistakes they were warning me against.  Or after I followed their advice and found out how wrong they were.

Opinion maker -- beware.