[stymaar]

I've no opinion whatsoever on the topic, but why can't economists refrain from writing opinion pieces in newspaper about topics they have no qualification on?

I'm sure there's enough dermatologists and pharmaceutical engineers to give their informed opinion on such a topic, instead of having economists speaking as everythingologists on every damn subject…

(I know why they do that, the author is merely a polical activist, but I wish editors would just close the door to such pieces).

[culi]

Frankly, the field of dermatology is so captured by corporations that my confidence is hardly raised when I see a degree in that field.

Is there a term for regulatory capture but for academia? Like "academic capture"?

[culi]

I'd say dermatology, nutrition/dietetics, and phytopathology are 3 of the worst fields in this regard. I don't think we're fully over the sugar lobby's stranglehold on relevant science and I think the glyphosate lobby's hold is even stronger than that was. How many times are we gonna go through these crises and not reform the way we do and fund science?

[alistairSH]

Poking around on Google, the scientific consensus seems to be that the EU or Asian sunscreens are in fact better. I haven’t found anything to the contrary.

[OptionOfT]

Sidenote: this phenomenon is known as the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

[culi]

Maybe more relevant is "Engineer syndrome" — the tendency of technically minded individuals to assume that their expertise in one area makes them an authority on everything

See also Nobel Disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

I think the problem overall is just that we live in a society that conditions us to get validation from the size of our paychecks. Software engineers get a fat paycheck and think "well I must be really smart. Why else would society compensate me like this?". I'm sure it's a problem in all sorts of highly-paid fields. I'm always shocked by how many physicians I see write massively ambitious, terribly researched generalizations (see Jared Diamond and the experts in relevant fields that will spend the rest of their lives dispelling myths he spread)