Kill the Experts!

“When I hear ‘culture’...I unlock my Browning!”

Hanns Johst

A spectre is haunting the world… the rejection of the experts. This is not the first time it has happened nor will it be the last. History has cycles, because societies and individuals have them.

This wave has been picked up and exploited by political leaders around the world, using idioms like: “enemy of the people”, and “...so called experts”.

The link between the rise of neo-populism and resentment against experts is the revolt against “liberal authoritarianism” and I use liberal in the economic term.

Experts have always been part of the system. In any area of human knowledge you will find an individual, who for reasons of their own, or circumstantial, has dedicated their life to a branch of knowledge or occupation, be it by studying it or working on it. You could sum it up as exposure.

It’s perfect common sense to ask an expert when in doubt or rely on them. If you are feeling ill, you consult a doctor. If you want to understand the traps of human thinking, you go to a philosopher, or if you want to understand how and why a star collapses you ask an astronomer.

No individual is an authority in all areas, it is impossible, and there is too much knowledge for one individual to master so you refer to others.

The examples given above require a lot of studying and usually university studies, but expertise is by no means limited to the upper echelons of institutional education. When your car breaks down you go to a mechanic, or if you are having a problem in your bathroom, you call a plumber. People that specialise in those fields and have a better chance of solving the problem.

One of my grandparents was a labourer; he spent all his life working the fields so he accumulated decades of experience. He gathered knowledge of crops, climate, terrain and methods, to mention a few. This made him an expert on the matter, so much that even renowned international agronomists, consulted him on certain topics. They were also trained and experts, but they recognised that it was better to consult other authorities, ones that didn’t possess a certificate but was knowledgeable.

In new populism, the attacks against experts are directed at those who would be considered to work on white-collar sectors: science, academia, economists, politicians, doctors, art critics, journalists, investigators, etc.

Some groups treat with hostility the scientists and studies (most of which agree) which point at human induced global warming, and when they attack they use primitive argumentation and fallacies, relying on pathos rather than on logos. Most distinguished panels agree that humanity has a direct and strong impact on global warming.

Anti-vaccine movements were given a great momentum after Andrew Wakefield, a former British doctor, published a paper in which he linked vaccines with autism. His paper was debunked; his methodology shown to be poor, and conflict of interests were highlighted because he received funds from litigants against vaccine manufacturers. He was barred from practicing medicine in the UK, but by then the damage had been done.

Measles has rebounded around the world, in Europe in quadrupled in 2018 compared to 2017,and just recently an anti-vaccine French family reintroduced Measles in Costa Rica, a country, which had not detected a single case of the disease since 2014.

How did we get to this state of affairs? Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the neo-liberal economic model took a hold on the world though some Frankenstein models exist, for example China which has embraced capitalism but which the elite of the Communist Party guide and limit. One of the elements of neoliberalism was the role of the “economic expert” and their recipes for economic growth.

For many reasons (which should be discussed in a separate essay), the promise of a richer society with more opportunities never consolidated. Money was concentrated on a minority; hard won worker rights were weakened to favour policies of the private sector, whilst the State, through politicians, favoured corporations at the expense of itself and the populace.

Many groups begun to resent the system, the dream never manifested itself, and the anger grew.

The stew of grudge was almost ready, but it needed two final ingredients to reach its potential. First, it needed a medium where the outraged folk could interact and organise themselves. The second and final ingredient: a loud and messianic leader that promised salvation and denounced the “so-called experts”.

It is essential to point out that being an expert is by no means a guarantee that you’ll be right all of the time. History is packed with examples where one believed truth or fact is then proved to be wrong. From Copernicus challenging the geocentric model to the theory that pointed that light propagated through aether.

Experts are humans; hence they can err and have limits. The complexity of modern life makes it impossible for it to be understood in its totality by one person. The epoch of the “Renaissance Man” is over.

The attacks on experts also have a political strategic reason. The objective is to eliminate counterweights and concentrate power. To win support the rhetoric enshrines and heightens the fixation on popular wisdom and urban legends.

Experts play a crucial and positive role in civilization, and their opinions on their subjects should be taken into account. Of course you should engage in debate and analysis with them, but through the proper lenses and be ready to accept that they might be right. This also applies to them though inversely, in other words, they should admit when they are wrong.

In Danny Boyle’s marvellous film Sunshine, a crew of astronauts has to launch the world’s biggest nuclear bomb to reactivate a dying Sun. In a crucial scene, they debate if they should go off course to pick up another bomb from the debris of a ship from a past mission that failed. As they are voting, one of the characters says that the decision should not be based on votes, but made by one person, the only physicist and expert on the complexities of the bomb and its chance for success and whether its better to have two bombs, but diverting from trajectory, or continue with just one? So said physicist goes and does his calculations for all possible scenarios.

The expert is important.