The Book
Experts are not infallible. Treating them as such has done us all a grave disservice—and, as The Weaponization 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 Weaponization 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.
Why We Wrote this Book
Our book developed out of a course we taught at our law school, “Populism and the Law.” If you had to reduce our course to a single question, it would be: Why do we see populism rising around the globe in both right-leaning and left-leaning forms? That is, how do we understand the similarities between Bernie Sanders supporters and Trump supporters despite the apparent differences? Framing the question this way meant we had to avoid most straw-man narratives about populism (e.g., that populists are just angry racists or even just angry conservatives). It forced us to examine the claims and perspectives of populist voters. Careful analysis and attention to empirics shook up many firmly held priors about populism—our students’ and our own.
We see it as lazy to dismiss populism without first seeking to understand it and take its claims seriously. Although seductive, the disdain for populism is dangerous. The willful ignorance that makes one write off populists has in recent years resulted in the election of authoritarians. Despite a brief window after 2016 when many sought to understand voters better, mainstream commentary seems to have moved back to its old register of contempt—which in turn begets yet more polarization, fear, and anger—and left Democrats unnecessarily blindsided by the results of the 2024 presidential election.
Elite Pathologies
Our book distills three dimensions of a flawed elite mindset that are as pervasive as they are corrosive. The first is condescension: because of a misguided faith in meritocracy, elites too often see an America plagued by the scourge of ignorance and the failure of common folk to trust their intellectual betters. Second, technocratic paternalism, a mindset that mischaracterizes our most important fights as being over facts. Many elites wrongly believe that if we can agree on the facts, agreement on policy will follow. The third mindset is intellectual tyranny. Elites see doubt and dissent as the result of faulty processes, if not outright corruption. This view paves the way for an anti-intellectual culture that brooks no dissent and assumes one’s nonelite opponents disagree only out of bad faith. Each of these three views is interrelated, stemming from the same valorization of credentials and merit, and each is equally corrosive.
Throughout our book, we use the pandemic as a case study, although our lens is much wider. Our contribution is to do what we can to improve the quality of public discourse when the next pandemic arrives. To be frank, there is little hope of a successful response to the next pandemic if we are not honest about what went wrong with the debates over the most recent one. If the climate for debate does not improve, we are doomed to repeat the mistakes made this time around.