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

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ignorance often plays host to intolerance and they can sit together at a granite bar with a fine Merlot just as easily as they can motor down the aisles of Walmart. I think Mr. Nichols would agree with this. My uncertainty here stems from the inherent problem of an intellectual successfully writing on the dangers of anti-intellectualism. It stirs mistrust. I struggled with skepticism, I confess, but his delivery is even-handed and (dare I say it?)….knowledgeable.

Mr. Nichols gets major points for bravery, as writing a book about the dangers of ignorance is a thankless enterprise. Experts of every kind (self-professed and world renowned) are fist-pumping while the wannabes and ordinary folk might feel slightly provoked.

Medicine, engineering, science, education, construction, law, technology, …. all of these disciplines and many more are populated with trained individuals who are daily challenged by dunderheads equipped with little more than google links wanting to dismiss hard-won expertise. The Death of Expertise speaks directly to these much-abused experts.

Nichols walks the reader through all of the digital-age malefactors and makes several good points about the challenges to expertise arising from the fact that there is just too, too much information out there. All of the culprits are addressed: confirmation bias, entertainment bubbles, erroneous polls and market research, very significant mistakes experts have made in the past, and the unshakeable belief many people now hold - that their own guesses are as good as the expert’s guesses.

I devoured this book, but a few questions nagged me.

In our ideologically bifurcated culture – supported by our beloved technologies – aren’t all of our new experts and future experts thoroughly drenched in some bias, some world view, some bubble-driven philosophy? Or have they acquired a super-human power enabling them, as they studied and worked, to embrace objectivity all throughout? Do they graduate from Brown, intern at Alphabet, and shuffle around at WeWork with their Shih Tzu while maintaining a healthy respect for the non-organic farmer from Topeka? Or is the non-organic farmer from Topeka not “a real expert” to be respected?

Also, if a hypothetical Mr. Smith has witnessed the experts getting it wrong (via wars, medicines, chemicals, investments, and, yes, technology) and if these mistakes-of-expertise seriously derailed Mr. Smith’s life … then how, oh how, does this mere mortal separate his sad, expertise-driven setbacks from a permanent, enervating cynicism?

I do not think that one person’s ignorance is better than another person’s knowledge and share the same goals as Mr. Nichols: a vibrant intellectual and scientific culture and in which its citizens trust its leaders and policymakers. Truly, how can we move forward without this?

My favorite section of the book was on Repairing the Relationship. I wish half the book had been devoted to this as most are aware of how serious the problem is, but few know how to fix it.

The resentment of experts by laypeople is institutionalized. And the resentment of laypeople by experts has grown exponentially since Donald Trump was elected president. So, can mutual resentment be remediated with mutual respect, without exacting a pound of flesh from each? And, if so, how?

The headwaters from which all rejection of expertise springs can possibly be found in our culture’s loathing of the mere prospect of right vs. wrong, good vs. bad. For decades we have couched our language and coached our children to accept that everyone is different, that one person’s right is another person’s wrong, and it’s all good. No worries. Has relativism effectively “greyed-out” that part of our brains which once nimbly identified something as correct or not? Surely, it has made it much harder to separate the crack pots from the competent.

Everyone will benefit from reading this book. It is challenging. It is worth it.

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