The Weaponization of Expertise

The problem with expertise—and the dark side of the equation “knowledge = power.”


Experts are not infallible. Treating them as such has done us all a grave disservice—and, as The Tragedy of Expertise makes painfully clear, given rise to the very populism that all-knowing experts and their elite coterie decry. Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson use the devastating example of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate their case, revealing how the hubris of all-too-human experts undermined—perhaps irreparably—public faith in elite policymaking. Paradoxically, by turning science into dogmatism, the overweening elite response has also proved deeply corrosive of expertise itself—in effect, doing exactly what elite policymakers accuse their critics of doing.

A much-needed corrective to a dangerous blind faith in expertise, The Tragedy of Expertise identifies a cluster of pathologies that have enveloped many institutions meant to help referee expert knowledge, in particular a disavowal of the doubt, uncertainty, and counterarguments that are crucial to the accumulation of knowledge. At a time when trust in expertise and faith in institutions are most needed and most lacking, this work issues a stark reminder that a crisis of misinformation may well begin at the top.