Antonym of "Crying Wolf too much"

Not sure if "The Boy who cried wolf" is idiom/phrase/something-else, so that is another question in itself as if the antonym is the correct operator for this context (and that could be another question).

While watching episode of Castle TV Series, upon hearing one of his crazy theories, his team members mention "he has been right too often" to dismiss his idea. Sounded like what opposite of what "he cried wolf too often" which is used to take away credibility by citing the past.

So maybe the correct question to ask should be, what is the phrase/idiom/saying when trying to give credibility to people as opposed to taking it away like "cried wolf too often"?


Solution 1:

He has an impressive / an outstanding / a strong / a proven / ... track record.

track record: a record of past performance often taken as an indicator of likely future performance

  • These stocks have a proven track record.

[Merriam-Webster]

(Obviously, a positive adjective premodifier is needed here.)

As always with requests for 'opposites', not every aspect of the original is mirror-imaged (nor is likely to be in any answer). 'Crying wolf' includes an obvious demand for attention while successful, wise people rarely blow their own trumpets (and neither do they necessarily flee from genuine acclaim).

Solution 2:

One opposite could be "to be a Cassandra", that is, to be right but not be believed. This doesn't bring in the repetition implied in crying wolf, so it isn't perfect.

Solution 3:

He has/is the “hot hand”. The phrase is said to come from basketball.

The "hot hand" (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand fallacy") was considered a cognitive social bias[1] that a person who experiences a successful outcome has a greater chance of success in further attempts. -wikipedia

This contrasts with “crying wolf” in the sense that credibility is given to someone for an (as yet) uncertain outcome. Note, however, that “crying wolf” isn’t merely a reduction in credibility. Although the semantic range includes those who aren’t believed merely because their predictions keep failing to materialise, it also includes the situation (as in the story behind the phrase) where the assertions are pronounced more for self interest than because the ‘crier’ believes what is being asserted. In the story, the boy continued to cry wolf without a wolf sighting for the fun of watching the efforts of the villagers.

Solution 4:

The "crying wolf" metaphor doesn't just refer to any unreliable source of information; for that, we have words like "unreliable". "Crying wolf" is when some signal is discounted (rightly or wrongly) because experience shows a particular reason to doubt that signal.

So, the opposite of this would not simply be any reliable source of information. Arguably the opposite to "crying wolf" is when a signal is believed because experience shows a spurious reason to believe that signal. For instance, someone is considered to be good at picking stocks, but it's just that they like investing in cars, and the car industry happens to have had a run of success. You might refer to such a person as a "busted flush", meaning their apparent ability turned out (or will turn out) to have been illusory.

If the question is how to argue that someone who isn't believed should be believed, then you might say something like "their results speak for themselves", or "they haven't steered us wrong". As @tgdavies says, Cassandra is a common (if melodramatic) metaphor for such a person.