What does it mean to be an expert on something? And who gets to say they are an authority on a particular subject — how much does someone need to know to reasonably say they are, in fact, an expert?
Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, argues we’re witnessing the death of expertise in a "Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based blogsodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen."
Nichols wrote the 2016 book "The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters." The second edition was published about a year ago. Nichols joined The Show to discuss how he looks at this idea of people who don’t necessarily have any formal training or experience in a particular field, say they’ve done their research and declare they know everything they need to know about it.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Tom, how do you look at this idea of people who don't necessarily have any formal training or experience in a particular field? They maybe say they've done their research and declare they know everything they need to know about it. How much more of that is there now than there has been in years past?
TOM NICHOLS: Well, what's different now, is that people, you know, it used to be that people would have suspicions or questions, right? You know, everybody gets tense around people in white jackets, you know, and you'd say, well, you know, I want a second opinion from my doctor, or boy, I hope the eggheads know what they're doing with all these nuclear tests.
What's changed is not the perfectly normal anxiety or concern about things that you don't know about. What's changed is that people now think that they're smarter than experts, that they say, I don't need a second opinion, I am my own second opinion. I'm as smart as my doctor. Let me explain how to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty. Let me explain to you how to put in plumbing. I mean, this happens with everything. It's not just in the professions. I had guys fixing my house a few years back who told me that they get this all the time where somebody, you know, walks up to a master electrician and says, so, what are you putting in there?
I think in part in the book, I make the argument, it's because of the growth of narcissism. People don't like to be told or to think, look, this isn't something you know about. You're just gonna have to trust somebody else to do it. But there, it's also just the complexity of modern life that, you know, people feel overwhelmed and so they say, I need more information. And so it's a way of reasserting control.
Now, one thing that is different is that if you wanted to do that 35 years ago, you had to go and sit in the library all day.
BRODIE: Yeah.
NICHOLS: Now, people can whip out their phones and say, well, my phone says right here, you know, that a study from Johns Hopkins once said, and so on.
BRODIE: Well, so you mentioned a narcissism and its role in all of this. You also write about resentment and how that is also a factor here. And I wonder, like, is that a new thing or has there always been sort of this sense of resentment but maybe as you said, people weren't just gonna go sit in a library for an hour and look through the encyclopedia or read books to figure it out. Now that it's more accessible, they can sort of act on that feeling.
NICHOLS: Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And, but I think that the resentment and the growth of narcissism have grown in tandem. You know, it's always been true that, you know, I'm, I'm 64 years old. I mean, I can remember people as a boy, you know, one of the, one of those pinheads know, you know, one of those pointy headed doctors know, you know, I, there's nothing wrong with me, you know, they.
But on the other hand, we also came from an era where we had a lot more respect for the achievements of modern society. And I think we've become, in the book, I use this term, that's been around for a while called hedonic adaptation, where our standard of living has risen so high that we just take a lot of it for granted, and we think that anything less than the standard of living that we're at now is somehow a failure of government and a failure of society.
And that leads to a certain amount of resentment as well, because when things go wrong and someone says, look, you know, this is a complicated problem, it's not simple, what people hear is, oh, so you're telling me I'm stupid. And that's really not what anybody is saying.
BRODIE: Well, so is there a balance, do you think between just sort of taking what somebody tells you at face value and accepting it versus maybe, you know, doing a little research and asking some questions and probing a little bit versus just assuming that you know better.
Like I, I think for example, you know, you go to a doctor and there are certain situations where, you know, the patient has a choice to make and they want to. I think probably rightly, really understand what's going on so they can make the choice that's best for them. But it seems like there's maybe a little bit of a difference between that and saying to the doctor, no, no, no, I don't have this. I, you know, I looked on Doctor Google and I really have this. Why aren't you checking for that?
NICHOLS: Absolutely, it's a really great question and let me just tell you a quick anecdote that happened to me when I was young, back in the 1980s. I went to a doctor. I had, I was all freaked out. I had this like dermatitis and my skin was all, you know, like within a day, I had all these crazy rashes. And it was, and it was like from detergent or something, and this doctor kind of shrugged and he looked at me and he said, turn around, and, and I turned around and he kind of pulled my belt lying down and he stuck a needle in me. And I said, what was that? And he said, it's just cortisone. He said, you'll be, you'll be fine in about an hour. And I said, are there any risks? And he said, yeah, there's about a 1 in 100,000 chance it's gonna destroy your hip joint. And I went, what? And he said, Oh, calm down, you know.
And I thought, OK, this is not the way you want to deal with an expert. I mean, he literally didn't even ask me, you know, I mean, he just, he was like, I got a young guy here, he's all flipped out. It's contact dermatitis. I've seen it 9 million times. And he just like poked me with the needle because 40 years ago, you could do stuff like that.
That's very different than what doctors, and I, and I interviewed a lot of doctors for this book. That's very different than what happens now with people walk in and they say, this is what I have, and this is what you're going to do. I think a conversation I found that most doctors I've ever dealt with, if I say, look, what is this medication? What is it supposed to do, and why am I taking it? They're almost relieved to be able to answer your question that way.
Let me back up and ask people out there, maybe if they remember Cliff Clavin from the series “Cheers.”
BRODIE: Of course, the mailman.
NICHOLS: I mentioned Cliffy in the book because, you know, Cliffy was that guy, right, guys, so I'm a professor of Italian art. Well, professor, you know, I myself have many times marveled that, you know, the frescoes of in and you just go, Jesus, Cliffy, shut up, you know. And it's, it's now we're all Cliff Clavin now.
BRODIE: What does that do for society when, you know, the experts, the people who know about medicine or, you know, science, or how to safely build a house or put in your plumbing or electricity or any number of other things are not really trusted or their opinions aren't sought anymore.
NICHOLS: It causes some very bad social dynamics in a lot of directions. One is, and let me just speak up for lay people here who say, you know, the experts, they don't want to tell us when they screw up. Well, that's right, because when all of society says, you know, you doctors are part of a conspiracy, and you plumbers are all just ripping us off, and teachers are just, you know, unionized propagandists, etc. etc., that when, when something does happen, they all want to retreat, you know, and circle the wagons and say, jeez, we don't, you know, we can't take getting hammered about, you know, being wrong about something, you know, with that a drug trial failed, or that, you know, we didn't do something well, or we designed an aircraft part wrong or something because the public is now in a position, not where they are expecting transparency from experts, but they are waiting to pounce on every mistake they make.
And that leads experts to going into a defensive crouch all the time, and they don't want to talk to the public.
BRODIE: So is this the way forward now?
NICHOLS: I don't know. I wrote the second edition with an expert admission of failure in the preface where I, I said, you know, when I, when I wrote the first edition, I said, this is gonna change, you know, one major disaster, and I included a pandemic, you know, I said a major depression, a war, a pandemic will come to our senses because we always do. Not this time.
And I don't know what it'll take this time. I'm not, I'm not sure, but it, I would say this, and I'm sorry to put it this way, it's not gonna happen anytime soon.
