26 May The Expert Card: When Reputation Replaces Precision
There is a phrase I have been thinking about lately: the expert card.
Not because I am interested in taking expertise away from anyone. In fact, quite the opposite. I think expertise matters. I think experience matters. People who have spent decades doing difficult work with animals have a tremendous amount to offer our field.
But expertise is not just a title, and it’s not a reputation. It is not just how long someone has been doing something, how many stages they have stood on, or how many people in the room know their name.
Expertise is a set of behaviors.
It shows up in how we define our terms. It shows up in how we describe what an animal is doing. It shows up in whether we can explain the contingencies operating in front of us. It shows up in whether we can revise our thinking when the data, the animal, or the learner tells us something is not working.
And this is where the expert card becomes a problem. The expert card is what happens when reputation substitutes for precision. It happens when authority stands in for analysis. It happens when disagreement is framed as ignorance, allegiance, or lack of experience. It happens when the person raising the question becomes the focus, instead of the question itself. That should concern us in any science-based field.
Animal training is already a field where people are trying to integrate practical experience, behavior science, welfare, ethics, safety, institutional constraints, and the realities of working with living animals. It’s easy for us to get caught up in ego in a field like this, where success could be taken as the “animal trusting us the most,” or that we “just have a way with the animal kind.” We do not make that better by treating reputation as if it answers the question.
We make it better by staying precise.
Expertise should make us more accountable
A conference platform carries responsibility. When someone is presenting to professionals, especially newer professionals, the language, framing, and examples all matter. The audience is not just listening for ideas. They are also listening for what is socially safe to ask, repeat, question, or challenge.
When an expert speaks from a platform, they are not only sharing training information, but also modeling professional behavior. They are showing the room how to handle disagreement. They are showing newer trainers what counts as evidence, what counts as skill, and what kinds of questions are welcome.
That does not mean every presentation has to be neutral or bland. We can have strong opinions. We can challenge old practices. We can say that we have changed our minds. We can say that the field needs to do better. We have seen this done, and done well. We have seen trainers push our field forward in a variety of ways.
But if we are going to make claims about skill, science, ethics, or welfare, then we have to define what we mean.
Otherwise, we are not assessing skill. We are sorting people.
Labels are not skill assessment
One of the fastest ways to move away from science is to stop describing behavior and start labeling people. Labels can feel satisfying because they are quick. They tell the audience whom to trust, whom to dismiss, and whom to place in which category. But they do not tell us much about actual training skill.
If we call someone naive, what have we measured?
If we call someone a blind follower, what behavior have we defined?
If we call disagreement bullying, what contingency have we identified?
Those labels may tell the audience how they are supposed to feel about a person or group. They do not tell us what the trainer can do. They do not tell us what the animal is learning. They do not describe the conditions under which a procedure is effective, ineffective, safe, risky, ethical, or unethical.
That is the difference between rhetoric and science. Science asks better questions. What behavior are we describing? What consequence follows? What options does the animal have? What is the trainer attending to? Can the trainer explain their criteria? Can they adapt when the animal gives them new information? Those questions give us something to work with. Labels do not.
These have real world consequences. These practices set the tone for how expertise is measured, what we consider actual science, and how we work with the birds in our care. I have seen this trickle down through our community.
Expertise is not the absence of scrutiny
Experience matters. Pattern recognition matters. There are things that come from years of observing animals, making decisions under pressure, training through complicated histories, and seeing enough cases that the patterns start to become visible. But experience does not remove the need for precision. In fact, the more influence someone has, the more precision matters.
When newer trainers are unclear, the impact is usually local. When influential professionals are unclear, the confusion travels. It becomes workshop language. It becomes conference language. It becomes social media language. It becomes the way people judge themselves and each other.
That is why expertise should make us more careful, not less. It should make us more willing to say, “Here are the conditions where I think this applies.” It should make us more willing to separate opinion from evidence.
It should make us more willing to say, “This is what I used to do. This is what I do now. This is what changed my thinking.” That kind of honesty is useful. It gives people a way to grow without shame.
Growth should not become a weapon
Animal training has changed. It should change. We should keep learning. We should keep refining our practices. We should keep asking whether the tools we inherited are still serving the animals and people in front of us. But growth should not become a weapon.
Many current experts used tools earlier in their careers that they may now discourage or use differently. That is not a failure. That is part of professional evolution.
The problem comes when evolution is presented without context. When people who are still navigating those tools under real-world constraints are made to feel lesser, outdated, or ethically suspect, we lose an opportunity for actual learning. There are facilities working with staffing limitations, legal requirements, safety concerns, public program demands, enclosure constraints, and species-specific realities. There are trainers trying to do better while still working inside systems that were not built overnight and cannot be redesigned by a slogan. That does not mean every practice is equally defensible. It means the analysis has to be honest.
If a practice is harmful, define the harm. If a procedure is risky, define the risk. If a better option exists, explain the conditions that make it better. If context changes the answer, say that. That is how people learn. Shame does not produce better science. It produces quieter rooms.
What expertise should look like
I do not think the answer is to stop evaluating trainers. I think we need better evaluation.
A meaningful model of expertise should tell us more than whether someone uses a certain tool, avoids a certain word, or can produce a more elaborate version of a behavior.
Skill is not just adding criteria.
Skill is knowing why the criterion matters. It is knowing when to raise criteria and when to lower them. It is recognizing when the animal’s behavior says the plan is not working. It is being able to explain a decision in terms of contingency, context, welfare, and safety. When we look at skill, we look at how a trainer can use a simple strategy when the situation calls for it, as opposed to getting more complex. Can a trainer return to basic approximations without ego? Can a trainer recognize constraints without hiding behind them? Mathematics tells us that the most important component of mathematical competence is flexibility. I would argue the same goes for competence in the animal training field. Learning how to change course based on what the animal is showing us rather than sticking to our version of what principles we want to apply is a true sign of skill.
Not expertise as a card that gets played to end the conversation. Expertise as a responsibility to make the conversation better.
The responsibility of being listened to
I do not think anyone becomes an expert by claiming the title. I think expertise is something other people begin to recognize because they can see the consistency of your work over time. But once people are listening, the responsibility changes. The words carry farther. The examples carry farther. The mistakes carry farther too.
That does not mean experts have to be perfect. It does mean they have to be accountable. If we want animal training to be a science-based field, then our professional spaces need to reflect that. We need clearer definitions. We need better models of skill development. We need room for disagreement that does not immediately become personal. We need leaders who can be questioned without making the person asking the question pay a social cost. It is the minimum standard for a field that says it values science.
Expertise should make us more precise. It should make us more open to revision. It should make us safer people to learn from.
It should not make us harder to question.