In Inquisitive, the quarterly magazine of Heterodox Academy, Thomas S. Huddle reviews The Weaponization of Expertise:

Popular skepticism of establishment orthodoxy and expert opinion, far from being a sign of ignorance or anti-intellectualism, is often warranted and sometimes closer to reality than what is being put forth by the experts. And the experts, rather than carefully and impartially bringing their expertise to policymaking, often disguise nakedly political judgments as expertise.

Still, their broader indictment of elites for supposing that expertise can settle what are actually political disputes is persuasive—even though there are many who will not be persuaded.

La Presse, the Montreal-based Canadian newspaper, features The Weaponization of Expertise in an essay on conspiracy theories:

Contrary to this mockery, Russell and Patterson call for a sincere dialogue that could lead to much-needed reconciliation. Liberal democracy is not based on the infallibility of experts, but on everyone’s ability to be heard—even when they are wrong.

(translated from the original French)

Read the full essay (in French).

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.

The New Yorker named The Weaponization of Expertise to its “Best Books We Read This Week” list, calling it a “persuasive account of how “tentative conclusions proclaimed by the powerful can harden into orthodoxies.”

In The New Yorker’s May 26, 2025 issue, Daniel Immerwahr reviews The Weaponization of Expertise in an essay:

“For liberals, veneration of expertise became a shibboleth… There was something ‘deeply ironic’ about formulating the support for science as a religious creed, Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson observe in The Weaponization of Expertise.”

The Motivated Skeptic, a Substack published by the Scottish philosopher Robin McKenna, has an thoughtful and extended review of Weaponization of Expertise:

A recent book…sets out to explain and critique the technocratic mindset and the common narrative about the problem with public discourse that goes with it…. They quite rightly skewer assorted members of the expert class for two related failings: they over-estimate their own skills and abilities, and they under-estimate the skills and abilities of ordinary people… As a corrective to the pathologies of elite discourse, this is welcome.

In Ataraxia or Bust, his Substack on Pyrrhonism, Doug Bates reviews The Weaponization of Expertise:

If you’re interested in an analysis of the extensive and wide-ranging recent failures of expertise, The Weaponization of Expertise is the go-to book.

Read the full essay here.

Le Point, one of the major French news magazines, features The Weaponization of Expertise in an essay by Peggy Sastre:

Follow the science. This phrase, omnipresent throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, was intended to be reassuring…. But what initially served as a guide gradually turned into an injunction. Behind the legitimate call to reason, a shift occurred. It was no longer an invitation to understand, but a summons to remain silent. Don’t argue, the experts know. And anyone who questions ceases to be a citizen and becomes an obstacle. A heresy.

At its heart, a university is a gamble on what happens when an institution shows an uncompromising commitment to free speech. Academic freedom is not just another rule in a policy manual. It is perhaps the constitutive feature of the modern American university, which is envied the world over. Yet few universities have come to a full-throated defense of that value. Few administrators seem to publicly espouse it; faculty openly question it; and the public hardly has reason to believe in it if universities themselves do not. For the university to save its soul, attitudes will have to change. […]

Russell and Patterson published an academic essay for a symposium on “post-truth” in Critical Review, the leading journal of political epistemology. The synopsis:

Populists are often cast as deniers of rationality, creators of a climate of “post-truth,” and valuing tribe over truth and the rigors of science. Their critics claim the authority of rationality and empirical facts. Yet the critics no less than populists enable an environment of spurious claims and defective argumentation. This is especially true in the realm of science. An important case study is the account of scientific trust offered by a leading public intellectual and historian of science, Naomi Oreskes, and the misapplication of that theory during the coronavirus pandemic.

Russell and Patterson published an essay on the problematic debate around masking, which fueled polarization:

The critics of public health messaging do not begrudge scientific progress—indeed, most of them want more research. Rather, people are upset by unjustified dogmatic certainty in one direction, followed by an immediate swoop to utter confidence in the opposite course of action. The pandemic produced a headfirst leap into a series of unprecedented interventions, from masks to lockdowns to school closures. In the first weeks of the pandemic, speed was necessary, and mistakes were inevitable. What was not necessary or inevitable was the suppression of healthy skepticism and discussion.

Russell and Patterson published an essay on the warped discourse that led to extended school closures:

[Elites have openly embraced the notion that the public is better served by exaggeration, downplaying uncertainty, or even deception (such as in official estimates of herd immunity). This disdain for healthy skepticism, a normal part of functioning science and democracy, is corrosive to public trust and impedes the accumulation of knowledge. A climate of overconfidence makes it both more likely that we will adopt bad policy and harder to fix our missteps. …

Mislabeling dissent over serious policy disagreements as denial has contributed to the extended closure of public schools, which could ultimately be viewed as the single biggest policy blunder in the pandemic. …

We must stop labelling every valid disagreement as denial, which tends to censor legitimate differences of opinion. In seeking to discourage bad-faith claims, we are also damaging good-faith discussion.

Read the full article, “Let’s put the straw man of pandemic denial out of his misery,” Stat News

Grant Reeher interviews Dennis Patterson on the Campbell Conversations, an NPR interview show from WRVO in Central New Yorker:

[Restoring political judgment] starts with it starts with the recognition that your interlocutor is not someone who proceeds in bad faith, that in fact, people have different views of the world. It’s like the old liberal political ideal that my conception of the good is something that I get to decide, not you, not the state. And so people have different competing conceptions of the good. If you cannot proceed in a respectful conversation where you take the other person seriously, you let to make their argument, you don’t make ad hominem arguments about them, that’s the sort of thing that I think we need to do. And I think in some ways that aspect is getting a bit is getting a bit better. Because Trump is such a polarizing figure, that no one really wants to be associated with that temperament. And it’s all about temperament. If you evince disdain for people, no conversation as possible. So just at that very basic level, respect for your interlocutor is a great place to start.

John Berger of Vital Interest, the blog of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, interviewed Dennis Patterson:

I would take issue with your premise that people are controlled in what they think. I agree with you, about the polarization. But in many ways, the polarization is more a manifestation of elite culture – both right- and left-leaning versions – than of voters. Fox isn’t a grassroots media organization based in the Midwest, after all. Nor is Fox news synonymous with populists, because remember populism is voters of both right and left who are turning on elites. Part of the reason that Jacob and I are writing this book is because we are worried about this discourse… Our discourse has basically deteriorated to the point where we can’t have a rational discussion….

The book is on-sale today, and TIME Magazine has an extended excerpt from Weaponziation of Expertise’s chapter on misinformation:

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” This saying has become one of the most overused phrases of the Trump era. It has a seductive appeal in a partisan era. It’s reassuring—your opponents must simply be misinformed—and suggests an easy solution—make sure people have the right information, and disagreement magically dissolves.

Faye Flam interviews Jacob Hale Russell for her podcast Follow the Science with Faye Flam: “Rutgers University law professor Jacob Hale Russell has studied populism and the public’s attitude toward expertise. He questions the stereotype of populists as those who dislike knowledge and hate science. Instead, their grievances are against use of science to deflect legitimate concerns and questions. We talk about how our policies – especially universal making - came about and why follow the science may be a problematic policy slogan but it’s still a pretty good name for a podcast.”

Vinay Prasad M.D. of Plenary Session interviews Jacob Hale Russell.

Listen to the podcast.

Vinay Prasad M.D. of Plenary Session interviews Jacob Hale Russell: “Today we bring back popular guest Jacob Hale Russell, an Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, for a discussion on expertise, disinformation, and intellectual disagreement.”

Listen to the podcast or see the show notes here.

Vinay Prasad M.D. of Plenary Session interviews Jacob Hale Russell: “On today’s episode we are joined by Jacob Hale Russell, an Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School. We discuss his forthcoming book on skepticism, elites, and expertise, as well as his article out now on StatNews about the myth of COVID-19 denial. We talk about anti-intellectualism and how science ought to be debated in the era of trade-offs and COVID-19.”

Faye Flam interviews Jacob Hale Russell in Bloomberg:

Politicians who claim they’re “following the science” on Covid-19 are starting to look disingenuous. Some are using it to stifle debate. “I think it would be wonderful if ‘follow the science’ meant we should bring science into the debate, but what it ended up meaning was ‘Our policy is the right policy and there is no alternative,’” said Rutgers Law School associate professor Jacob Hale Russell, who has been studying the relationship between expertise and populism.