The death of expertise

Who do we trust when the experts fail?

I've spent the past few hours watching coverage on various cable news channels of fallout from the FBI’s Monday raid on former president Donald Trump's residence in Palm Beach, Florida. The Justice Department claims that there was no other way to recover the classified documents they were looking for. Disdain and disbelief are widespread. Who knows if any of it is justified?

For what it's worth, I think that the Justice Department and FBI are going out of their way to treat this situation delicately and professionally. They know the score -and the fallout. I think that the need to recover documents probably was dire and the circumstances extraordinary. But I don't know any of that for a fact. And based on the past six years, I can't blame anyone who thinks that all of this has been ginned up by the current administration and the federal bureaucracy to undermine former president Trump.

The worst part about our recent past has been the death of expertise. Nearly all of the people who we are supposed to trust to be apolitical and to play things straight have abandoned these basic responsibilities to engage in weaponizing debate to acquire money, acquire political power, secure personal and/or professional advancement, advance personal causes or simply to curry favor with the right people.

I have always had faith in and respect for our institutions. I recognize that they are not perfect and that some failures are more than to err is human. But what's happened in the past decade to our educational, media, academic, governmental, legal and scientific institutions is enough to give pause even to people inclined to trust them, like me.

I don't know how we got so far off track. I suspect that it has something to do with a general lowering of professional standards bumping into several generations already predisposed to laggardry as a result of being raised on time outs instead of “wait until your father gets home.” But none of that is certain. All I know is that it's very difficult for me to get after anyone anymore who thinks that most of what they read or see from “experts” may not be true.

Anyone who's graduated from elementary school knows that politicians generally utter nothing untainted with self-interest. It's just the gap between reality and their particular brand of fantasy that's grown without limit. These days the rarest of rare things is a politician who speaks to objective reality in a truthful manner. It's so rare that I'm often tempted, when I do hear it, to write the Pope and enquire as to the official requirements for a miracle.

I've bashed the media here so many times that it's just too painful to do again today. Right now is Tour of Idaho season and we have several international riders this year. A conversation that's come up frequently with them is how bad the media is in their countries as well. It seems that sowing discord for profit is universal. That and never admitting to a mistake.

Educational and academic institutions are so dominated by liberal politics and leftist unions that they are effectively useless as neutral sources of information. Every survey of which I'm aware shows that these institutions are dominated by those affiliated with Democratic politics. That's hardly a recipe for being a neutral arbiter of facts. The results speak for themselves.

None of the above particularly surprises me. What does surprise me is the degree to which science has been corrupted by the same forces. I subscribe to a publication, Retraction Watch, which keeps track of academic papers retracted due to innocent things like mistakes, but also serious things like data manipulation, bias and fraud. The size of the current list is astounding and I'm sure that it's an underestimation of the magnitude of the actual problem.