The Crisis of Expertise

by Gil Eyal

In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed  pushmi-pullyu  of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture.  This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2019

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a much better review than I could write, and which I largely agree with, over here https://link.springer.com/article/10....

The book is an excellent unpacking of the challenges society is having with expertise. It also shows how many of the things done to address the crises actually make it word. Unfortunately the book doesn’t provide any specific solutions.

Interesting to note is the point that social media et al haven’t created the crises, though the accelerated media cycle does exacerbate the problem.

I expect that any solution to the crise will rely on a different approach to time.

[Fred Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess not surprisingly, this is a pretty academic look at the topic and pretty difficult to parse. Not particularly useful to the practitioner I don't think. The upshot seems to be a scientist or expert really needs to communicate at different levels on their technical expertise and put a "layer" on top of it geared towards the public. That's certainly not new or particularly useful.

[Matthew J Brown]

Teaching this book next semester in my seminar on Public Trust in Science.

[Meaghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

finished 100 pages and don’t want to go further. way too verbose and esoteric. too much went over my head. the concepts could have been presented more clearly.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is the blurb praising the writing sarcastic.