A new study suggests that experts may be less politically biased than non-experts at least in some limited circumstances. The study looked at lay people, law students, lawyers and judges, while giving them questions where their ideology might cause them to answer the questions differently even as a close reading would cause them to have the same answers. As one increased the expertise levels, there was less sign of ideological bias. There's a summary of the research here. The study itself can be found here. It should be interesting to see if this is replicated in similar ways either again in the legal context or with other professions.

This research suggests that for ideologically or politically involved topics, looking to expert opinion may be a good heuristic. On the other hand, it isn't always clear how to tell who should be an expert, and ideological gatekeepers could make it so that experts are already chosen from one set of ideologies.