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Notes -
This social vulnerability of Mrs. Cowles actually points to the real problem though.
Returning to our original concern:
The people pushing these kinds of approaches are generally not backing it with nearly-ironclad scientific literature that can be picked apart only with an advanced degree. At most there might be something that kind of looks like a study if you don't squint too hard at it. Usually it's a headline with zero backing: for an example, an anti-vaccine friend recently gave me a picture of a man in a doctor coat, with a label stating that six children died in the clinical trial for a particular vaccine. Attempts to find out what the study was, how big the sample size was, what the death count in the control was, etc. have been so far unsuccessful.
Mrs. Cowles' knowledge of the financial system didn't matter because she wasn't engaging on that level at all: there were undoubtedly financially-related red flags, but she wasn't applying that knowledge. And if our goal is to create mothers resistant to incorrect health decisions pushed by someone with an agenda, their degree won't matter because it's far easier to take an approach that bypasses the topical discussion in favor of social weaknesses, which don't seem to be remedied as part of a higher education.
Teaching bullshit detection in schools is probably fraught with culture war concerns (undoubtedly everyone will be attempting to teach only how to detect the outgroup's bullshit). But if we're not going to do that, I'm not sure a master's degree is going to change vulnerability to these kinds of arguments. It's the equivalent of an intimidating twelve-foot-high barbed wire fence, but the gate is secured with a cheap rusted combination lock set to 1234.
And is a mother with no education more likely, or less likely, to know that she should ask these questions, or understand the terminology?
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