Undark Book Review: The Trouble With Depending on Experts
Writing in Undark, a magazine exploring the intersection of science and society, Frieda Klotz reviews The Weaponization of Expertise:
Russell and Patterson, two law professors at Rutgers University, elucidate the many other ways in which they believe expertise has gone awry. …[W]hile the government’s response to the pandemic forms the backdrop to their thesis, Russell and Patterson want to make a broader point: experts have misused their authority, deployed their credentials to suppress dissent, and fed a public distrust that has backfired and led to populism.
… [I]t is hard to argue with their broader argument. Presenting unconfirmed evidence as fact undermines expertise…. All too often, in their view, rather than enabling policymakers and members of the public to make better decisions, experts’ credentials are deployed to “foreclose debate.”
Russell and Patterson gleefully puncture many of the beliefs, institutions, and leading lights in liberal thinking who “dismiss their critics without engaging them.”
[U]nderlying their contrarianism is a desire for better, more robust scholarship. Overconfident expressions of expertise are everywhere, whereas real learning is complex and full of unsettled questions.
Read the full review, “The Trouble With Depending on Experts,” in Undark.