麻豆传媒

IF ROGER KNEEBONE is an expert, he has spread his expertise widely. Trained as a medical doctor, he spent many years working as a trauma surgeon in the township of Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the height of apartheid, before returning to the UK to become a general practitioner in rural Wiltshire.

Now in his third career as a professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, he has been at the forefront of many innovations aimed at widening the scope of influences that students are exposed to. These include setting up a with the neighbouring Royal College of Music and helping to devise the , which exposes chemistry undergraduates to lab skills through the 鈥渘on-threatening鈥� parallel of cooking.

Kneebone has also tried his hand at many extracurricular activities, from flying light aeroplanes and learning to juggle to building harpsichords 鈥� with varying degrees of success, he freely admits. He recently wrote a book, . Drawing on the experiences of people from musicians to magicians and tailors to taxidermists 鈥� and some scientific and medical experts for good measure 鈥� it examines the ubiquitous, but understudied, process of becoming an expert.

Richard Webb: Experts are very much in the public eye at the moment.

Roger Kneebone: I finished writing the book just before the UK鈥檚 March covid-19 lockdown began. But now more than ever we need to think about how we make use of the most valuable aspect of expertise 鈥� the wisdom based on experience that allows people to give sensible guidance about what to do and what not to do. My motivations in writing the book were to ask what does 鈥渂eing an expert鈥� mean and where does that expertise come from?

So what does being an expert mean?

That鈥檚 actually a surprisingly tough one to answer. Broadly, it means that you are demonstrably extremely good at what you do, having spent a long time learning your craft; that you can pass your knowledge on to other people; and that you are recognised by other people as being extremely good at what you do.

But there are complications. For a start, people often underestimate their own level of expertise and others might recognise you as an expert in ways you don鈥檛 yourself. So you, for example, have a background in physics, right? You might be regarded by some as an expert in physics, or you might be regarded by others as an expert in putting together a magazine. But there鈥檚 a chance you don鈥檛 entirely see it that way.

Often there鈥檚 a social judgement involved, too: we think of brain surgeons or fighter pilots or concert pianists as having greater expertise than mechanics or plasterers or plumbers. We often overlook the experts all around us who don鈥檛 occupy very high positions in this hierarchy or whose area of expertise isn鈥檛 regarded as 鈥渋mportant鈥�. That鈥檚 a great mistake.

In the run-up to the UK鈥檚 2016 EU referendum, government minister Michael Gove infamously said that the UK had had enough of experts. Is expertise generally undervalued?

I think there鈥檚 been a very dangerous sense growing that experts are sort of a needless luxury. They鈥檙e telling us what to do, and what do they know about it?

The coronavirus pandemic has brought the value of expertise into sharp focus. In medicine, there鈥檚 the mantra that a surgeon knows how to operate, a good surgeon knows when to operate and a really good surgeon knows when not to operate. The same goes for someone who comes to check your boiler, or a whole host of other things.

Expertise isn鈥檛 just about knowing stuff and being able to do stuff, but about having the judgement to apply that knowledge in the right way: to improvise, to bring accumulated experience to bear on a new situation where there may be no clear answers, but we need to make decisions anyway. Governments and tabloid newspapers have an instinctive dislike of operating under conditions of uncertainty because they want simple answers to questions. If we dismiss the value of experts, just pooh-pooh them and say we don鈥檛 need them, we are depriving ourselves of something crucially important.

Is part of the problem that we have developed a very 鈥渢hem and us鈥� idea of expertise?

There is that very unhelpful sense that an expert is the same as an elitist. One of the things that struck me working together with and observing people in all different walks of life is how universal the process of becoming an expert is 鈥� and that, in fact, the same process applies to us all, whatever we do or are interested in. We don鈥檛 necessarily always make it particularly far along the path, but we all follow it, whether we鈥檙e learning a language or to play a sport or a musical instrument or whatever.

But there are also the experts we need because they can do things that we can鈥檛. It might be flying planes or doing operations, or advising us about pandemic lockdowns or having sensible things to say about education during covid-19 鈥� all these things are swirling around at the moment, where we see stupendous failures of judgement of various kinds, which I think are very often because of an unwillingness to accept the value of experts.

Part of it is because people haven鈥檛 made this connection between other experts and what we all do. An expert epidemiologist, say, may have gone a long way along a particular path, but they鈥檙e still on that same path we all are. They鈥檙e not a completely different species 鈥� the process itself is a universally human one.

In your book, you talk about the three stages of becoming expert in something: apprentice, journeyman and master. What鈥檚 the difference?

In the apprentice stage, generally somebody else is taking responsibility for your cock-ups, and also taking credit for your successes. You have to spend a load of time doing stuff that other people tell you, whether you like it or not, whether you think it鈥檚 useful or not and whether you even understand it or not 鈥� and you usually don鈥檛. It can be boring, it can be tedious, it can be frustrating, whether you鈥檙e learning to take bloods in my case when training to be a surgeon, making a stone surface flat or smooth if you鈥檙e trying to be a mason, learning tricks as a magician or anything you can imagine.

But during that time, you find all sorts of other things happen that you鈥檙e not aware of. You come to understand the materials you鈥檙e working with and what you have to do to work with them. You understand how to occupy the space you鈥檙e in, how to interact with other people, how to work in a workshop or community. And that takes a long time.

And as a journeyman and master?

As a journeyman, two very interesting things happen. You change your focus of attention from yourself and the things that you鈥檝e learned 鈥� the exams you鈥檝e passed, the stuff you want to show off 鈥� to whoever your work is for: an audience, patient, customer or client. Simultaneously, you鈥檙e moving to becoming an independent person with your own individuality and style, what jazz musicians call 鈥渧oice鈥�.

As a master, you must obviously take responsibility not only for the people you鈥檙e working for, but for other people who are also doing that work: apprentices, trainees, PhD students or whoever. But under the surface, you鈥檙e having to develop that quality of wisdom and to shape other people鈥檚 direction.

鈥淓xpertise isn鈥檛 just about knowing stuff; it鈥檚 having the judgement to apply knowledge in the right way鈥�

There鈥檚 two crucial skills you only develop in this phase. First, how to deal with error, both in terms of recovering from an error 鈥� crucial obviously as a surgeon, but in a whole host of other areas, too 鈥� and building up your own resilience. And you learn to improvise 鈥� not in the sense of just knocking something up on the spur of the moment because you haven鈥檛 thought about it in advance, but in being able to respond to the unexpected, and to bring into play all the knowledge and experience you鈥檝e gained to make a sensible response to an unpredicted situation. That鈥檚 the sort of wisdom in expertise we鈥檙e looking for now.

And building that sort of expertise takes a lot of time and effort?

Absolutely, and there are no shortcuts. One of my colleagues at Imperial, Sara Rankin, a professor of stem cell biology, mentioned a breakthrough her research group made recently when they were looking at populations of cells under the microscope. She said, 鈥淚 think we should just have another look at those ones in the top-right-hand corner; I don鈥檛 know why, I just feel we should鈥� 鈥� and she was right.

There鈥檚 something that she was only able to do because she鈥檇 spent 20 or 30 years actually doing stuff with her sleeves rolled up with cell cultures and looking at microscopes. Her expertise was a very physical thing, a sense of where to look, an awareness of the whole context of what she was doing. Experts I鈥檝e talked to in all sorts of fields say again and again, it鈥檚 about getting things into your hands and your fingers 鈥� even if it鈥檚 just interpreting graphs or printouts as a scientist or engineer, it鈥檚 a physical thing, and it takes time to become good at it.

Do we give people the necessary time and space to become an expert?

If you accept that becoming an expert in whatever requires a very long time, and it requires a nutrient environment, where you have time to do stuff, and get things wrong at the beginning and be protected, and then become independent and go through all these stages, when you look at what鈥檚 happening from quite an early age, certainly in the UK, there are real problems.

All those opportunities that people used to have at school for doing stuff with their hands, for doing things like music or dance or drama that allow them to explore their physical space, for performing to other people and working in groups 鈥� all those things that the process of becoming expert builds on 鈥� are being stripped out of the curriculum. More and more, we鈥檙e being encouraged to think that really only the sciences are worth doing, all the rest is touchy-feely stuff that doesn鈥檛 matter. This absolutely couldn鈥檛 be further from the truth 鈥� partly because, as humans, we need those different aspects, but partly because there is just as much craftsmanship and performance in expert laboratory science as there is anywhere else. We are impoverishing people at an early, formative stage and it鈥檚 very difficult to get these things back.

Coronavirus limits our ability to physically learn together, possibly long-term. How do we deal with that?

That鈥檚 a very interesting issue. I鈥檝e been talking with some colleagues 鈥� a magician, a musician, a teacher and a clinician 鈥� about how to make sense of the online world in teaching practical skills, whether it鈥檚 playing a keyboard instrument, doing magic tricks or putting a central line in somebody in an intensive care unit. There are some interesting possibilities, including technologies such as haptics, but at the moment there are more questions than answers on that one.

Would you say you are now an expert on being an expert?

(Laughs) One thing that unites all the people I spoke to is that becoming an expert has a beginning, but it doesn鈥檛 have an end. All of them say, 鈥淲ell, I can鈥檛 do it as well as it could be done鈥�. There isn鈥檛 some point you get to sit down in a chair, beam benignly and say, 鈥淣ow I鈥檓 an expert鈥�. It is a continuous progression, and that鈥檚 what makes it so fascinating to study.