Pandering to the expert rather than focusing on the idea

Writing in progress...

It strikes me how often people justify ideas by referring name dropping experts. This is actually one of the more enlightened ways of doing it:

"Richard Tol is a research professor at ESRI in Ireland, one of the top 175 economists in the world and a contributor to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)"

At least here the link qualifies why this person is an expert e.g. Tol is often cited. But is Tol's view any more enlightened than any other person's guesswork?

For me there seems to be a distinct cut off point between statements about the world that can be measured e.g. physics, chemistry, biology etc and then conjecture based on assumptions of how people will react in the future. Okay, this is dangerous close to slamming the whole of the social science tradition but I want to make a point.

When it comes to predicting how people will behave or react to a future scenario, why not ask people, surely this is where Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a benefit, by measuring the system we can change it, and hopefully by involving people move things in a positive direction. In other words, maybe social scientists should stop pretending to be finding out fundamental truths about society and be more open with their ideas and how we want to influence things. I don't think there is any such thing as an objective social science experiment...but then I doubt any social 'scientist' would argue here either.