The Death of Expertise

Ignorance Is Strength?

Recent decades have seen a drastic shift in how people in the United States view expertise. Americans have always been skeptical of intellectuals – the “eggheads.” But today, laypeople have turned that resentment into hostility and have elevated know-nothingness to a “virtue.” In general, they believe in a distorted type of democratic equality, in which everyone is equally competent and equally capable of handling complex issues. In this view, the judgment of experts in science, politics or the law carries no more weight than anyone else’s opinions.

“We Don’t Need No Education”

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1835, the citizens of American democracy cultivated an attitude of “intellectual self-reliance.” They believed an average person was capable of administering public policy. That attitude endured into the 20th century. But as human knowledge grew larger and more specialized, a gulf grew between laypeople and experts, and it fostered distrust. Laypeople sensed that they couldn’t possibly muster the fundamentals of specialized fields ranging from aviation to medicine – let alone fly a plane or prescribe drugs – and increasingly...