How America Lost Faith in Expertise

Large swaths of Americans have come to reject the role of experts in society. Outright contempt for the specialized knowledge that experts possess has replaced healthy skepticism about their limitations. Feelings and opinions have supplanted facts and knowledge in critical public policy debates. Informed disagreements in which knowledgeable people debate a topic have devolved into angry, emotion-fueled yelling matches detached from facts. Many Americans increasingly reject the idea that any meaningful difference exists between the knowledge possessed by laypeople and experts. Instead, they embrace the notion that all opinions hold equal value. This disdain for expertise arrives at a time when citizens need experts more than ever to help navigate increasingly complex societies and institutions.

“What used to be a jocular and usually benign ridicule of intellect and formal training has turned into a malign resentment of the intellectual in his capacity as expert…Once the intellectual was gently ridiculed because he was not needed; now he is fiercely resented because he is needed too much.” (historian Richard Hofstadter)

The abundance of information now available fuels the public’s dismissive attitude toward expertise. When laypeople acquire some limited knowledge about complex public policy matters, they may erroneously think they are just as informed as the experts. Under-informed citizens can embrace gross oversimplifications or conspiracy theories to fill their knowledge gaps. They often seek out information that reinforces their pre-existing views about politics and society – a phenomenon known as “confirmation bias” – and the Internet magnifies this tendency. The massive amount of information available online may make people more inclined to think they have acquired a level of expertise they don’t have, heightening their dismissal of real mastery gained through systematic, in-depth study.

“The countless dumpsters of nonsense parked on the Internet are an expert’s nightmare.”

This growing willingness to believe there is no meaningful difference between lay opinions and expert recommendations has a deleterious effect on democracy. Democratic political institutions rely on experts to function properly, and social progress depends on a division of labor between “ordinary citizens” and “intellectual experts.” Mutual trust between these two groups is essential to a functioning society. When this relationship breaks down, society can devolve into either mob rule or elitist technocracy. To move forward, Americans must establish new rules of productive engagement between laypeople and experts. Otherwise mutual suspicion and hostility will continue to pollute the public discourse. Anything is possible in such a toxic environment, including the end of democracy itself.