What to Do When Experts Disagree

How should a layperson respond to learning that the experts on a given topic disagree amongst themselves? This paper argues that, epistemically, the appropriate response to an expert disagreement depends greatly on what explains the disagreement, and that there are several quite different types of explanations for a given disagreement. Accordingly, expert disagreement calls for different epistemic responses in different circumstances. However, the paper also supplements this pluralist account of how to respond epistemically to expert disagreement with a unifying account of how laypeople should response ‘zetetically’ to expert disagreement – that is, how they should direct their inquiry concerning the contested claim. Indeed, it is precisely because of the plurality of appropriate epistemic responses to expert disagreements that laypeople often have strong reasons to inquire into what explains the presence of disagreement among experts.