Judgment is a good thing for society. These fictitious fields hurt the credibility of real fields of study. If you’re a doctor—or anyone else, but especially a doctor—you should be publicly, vociferously, and condescendingly judgmental towards homeopathy or chiropractic. It’s your obligation for the good of the public.
Education is also important — along with the administration of that education — so when people judge things they can do so from a standpoint of understanding and not from the standpoint of reactionary politics and uninformed gut takes. (Education is how doctors become doctors, after all.) Thoughtful and educated judgment born of understanding is good for society. Just clouding things with dumb opinions — or pure bullshit — helps no one.
If something is obviously not working, or doesn’t make sense, it’s important that the public be able to criticize it by reference to common sense and lived experience. Otherwise, you’re turning over the policing function entirely to the same people who are deeply invested in protecting the legitimacy of a field of inquiry.
Legitimate fields of study usually do not have trouble establishing their legitimacy to ordinary people. My undergraduate degree is in aerospace engineering. I’ve never had to argue from authority to get people to accept that’s a legitimate field that produces actionable facts.
The point is that they earned this authority, because their planes fly, whereas, for example, experts on childhood education cannot point to such obvious undeniable achievement that laypeople cannot reach.
