The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

by Thomas M. Nichols

Expertise and government rely upon each other, especially in a democracy. The technological and economic progress that ensures the well-being of a population requires the division of labor, which in turn leads to the creation of professions. Professionalism encourages experts to do their best in serving their clients, to respect their own boundaries, and to demand their boundaries be respected by others, as part of an overall service to the ultimate client: society itself. Dictatorships, too, demand this same service of experts, but they extract it by threat and direct its use by command. This is why dictatorships are less efficient and less productive than democracies, despite the historical myths many Americans continue to believe about the putative efficiency of Nazi Germany and other such regimes.9 In a democracy, the expert’s service to the public is part of the social contract. Citizens delegate the power of decision on myriad issues to elected representatives and their expert advisers, while experts, for their part, ask that their efforts be received in good faith by a public that has informed itself enough to make reasoned judgments.