The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

How have we come to a position where those with quantifiable experience, demonstrated expertise and hard won knowledge are no longer respected for the consideration and effort they have expended to attempt to draw high quality conclusions. Or worse than that, how have experts come to be treated by areas of the general populace as though for all the detailed analysis they have made that their views are of no higher value than that of anyone on the street who has the ability to share an opinion, often based on a thing called ‘common sense’, something which has not been scrutinised but just feels right. The outcome is that fewer people than ever appear to respect learning and expertise.This book gives the context for this growth in simplistic thinking by presenting a series of examples which outline where the lack of scrutiny and the tendency to give equal weighting to unfounded opinion has entered our daily conversation.Nichols refers to changes in the media over the last century. The growth in talk radio and the proliferation of cable TV channels and to changes in how news is delivered. How news has changed from scheduled, bulletin based news, to 24 hour rolling news, where once there would have been expert opinion. Now there is a huge amount of airtime available, people are engaged to speak who are experts in completely different fields, or not experienced in the topic area at all, with the result being that those without the skills to identify this shoddy thinking are taken along for the ride. Journalistic scrutiny is an area which is not as well practised as it was formerly. Younger, busier, more inexperienced journalists are up against fast moving schedules with a need to fill air-time with a result that the quality of their analysis is diminished or critical thinking is non-existent. Opinion is given equal weighting to that of expert analysis, something you will recognise in the UK if you listen to national talk radio where a climate change denier can be given equal credibility to that of the weight of the full scientific community, and the focus appears to be not on the disparity of the evidence between the two positions but that there is some sort of debate to be had where there should in reality be none due to the claims being demonstrably and well know to be false.The education system, particularly that of the US, also has a part to play. It isn’t that people are not educated, but that the quality of that education has been altered to meet the expectations of those paying for a ‘consumer experience’ rather than to be challenged in their belief systems. The prevailing attitude is becoming one of ‘the customer is always right’ and the outcome of that is that gaining a degree now bears more resemblance to training than education, two distinctly different concepts. An education system where critical thinking is no longer a core element of the curriculum can not be counted as being fit for purpose.Experts are also not spared from having some responsibility, however the part they play is a much more subtle one and is in part a reflection of the difficulty in expressing complexity to an audience that isn’t just ignorant of that complexity but is wilfully ignorant in the face of evidence to the contrary. Nichols makes reference to Dunning-Kruger, and the veracity of that effect can easily be witnessed on the internet, book reviews are often a give-away, although hopefully not this one…The greatest influence of all is the internet and social media. These channels allow people to quickly find information which reinforces their way of thinking, there is no critical thought, just confirmation bias in an infinite feedback loop. Any information is skimmed, assumed to be absorbed, and makes instant experts of those that have less depth of knowledge than a tea stain on the cover of a mathematical textbook.An interesting and ultimately depressing read. Although a brief skim of the internet suggests to me that there may have been moments like this throughout the entirety of history, fingers crossed hey, it’s common sense…

Tom Nichols makes a number of interesting remarks in this book. For instance, he reports an opinion poll in the USA (in 2014) showing that it was those who knew the least who showed the greatest enthusiasm for a possible military intervention in Ukraine. In chapter 6 Brexit and the election of President Trump are discussed. During the Brexit debate Michel Gove famously said: “I think people in this country have had enough of experts”. Tom Nichols conclude that politically we are all equal, we all have one vote. But when assessing opinions on the internet, we are not all equals, some opinions are worthy of greater consideration. Of course ”experts” can sometimes be wrong, but it would just be foolish not to take into account the reliability and expertise of any information or opinion sources.

An excellent read. Science has made our western civilisation strong and resilient and the book exposes those who would break this structure down by a mixture of crass ignorance and a mischievous adherence to unscientific political stances and ideology. Our civilisation ignores measured, tried and tested, scientific findings at its peril

Important book, especially because makes clear the difference between republic, democracy and technocracy and why experts and people should dialogue again

An important book for surviving our times.