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How America Lost Faith in Expertise
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How America Lost Faith in Expertise

And Why That's a Giant Problem

Tom Nichols
Foreign Affairs, 2017
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Recommendation

In an age when people have an overabundance of information at their fingertips, many Americans have embraced the idea that they can – and do – know as much about government as public policy experts. US Naval War College professor Tom Nichols presents a cogent thesis about what underpins this growing phenomenon of disdain for expertise. Nichols’s essay is an urgent, clarion call to urgently restore the symbiotic relationship between “ordinary citizens” and “intellectual elites.” While always politically neutral, getAbstract recommends this analysis to anyone concerned about the state of open and constructive conversation in the United States.

Summary

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...

About the Author

Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College.

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