How America Stopped Trusting the Experts
A conversation with Tom Nichols about American narcissism, the pandemic, and declining trust
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In 2017, my Daily colleague Tom Nichols wrote a book titled The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. Three years later, America underwent a crisis that stress-tested citizens’ and political leaders’ faith in experts—with alarming results.
The Atlantic published an excerpt today from the second edition of Tom’s book, which includes a new chapter evaluating the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the relationship between experts and the public. I chatted with Tom recently about American narcissism, the mistakes experts have made during the pandemic, and why listening to expert advice is a responsibility of citizens in a democracy.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Narcissism and Distrust
Isabel Fattal: Why did you feel it was important after the COVID-19 crisis to rerelease this book?
Tom Nichols: The book is currently being used in colleges and even some high schools around the country, and it’s been translated into 14 languages, so at some point, I think my editor and I knew we wanted to keep the book fresh and update it. We would email each other now and then about some gobsmacking example of people rejecting expertise and say that it needed to go into a second edition.
But we didn’t see COVID coming, or the way that the pandemic deepened the crisis of trust in knowledge. In the book, and in presentations I would give over the years, I predicted that a crisis would probably alleviate some of this problem as people turned to science for answers and help, and I was wrong. So I thought it was important to look at the past few years more carefully and ask why things got worse.
Isabel: You write in the excerpt that “when the coronavirus arrived, a significant number of Americans were already primed by the media, their political leaders, and their own stubborn narcissism to reject expert advice during a crisis.” When do you think America’s faith in experts began to plummet?
Tom: It’s almost a cliché to haul off easy answers and say “Vietnam and Watergate,” but even clichés contain some truth. It really is the case that the crisis of expertise began in the early 1970s, for several reasons. The misconduct of a president and several executive-branch agencies produced a feeling that U.S. institutions were no longer led by wise people. And a war that we couldn’t seem to win had a profound effect on trust and social cohesion.
But the ’70s were also the Me Decade. People looked inward after all the turmoil of the previous decade, and they decided to seek answers to a lot of things on their own. It’s not a coincidence that the ’70s were the heyday of cults and fads and quack remedies and “ancient astronauts.” This is when anti-vaccine movements started to pop up. We think we have it bad now, but go look up Laetrile and pyramid power to see what things were like 40 or 50 years ago.
The problem, of course, is that the Me Decade never really ended, so here we are.
Isabel: You argue that one mistake scientists made was to take on the role of elected officials. Can you talk me through that shift?
Tom: If you look back at those White House press briefings, where you had people such as Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci standing there uncomfortably while Donald Trump ranted about bleach and lights, you can see where they and other experts felt the need to clarify useful policies in a way that ordinary people could follow, especially because elected leaders—and not just Trump—were making a mess of things. Early in the pandemic, for example, I was impressed by then–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who seemed like a steady and capable hand on the tiller. But Cuomo—as we now know and as I discuss in the book—was desperately trying to cover up his own lethal mistakes.
The scientists, people we’d mostly never heard of at the state and federal levels, stepped forward to issue guidance. But that’s not their job, and, frankly, talking to the public isn’t their main skill set. People, understandably, don’t want to take orders from appointed officials. When it came time to close public places—and, even more important, to reopen them, including schools—scientists got dragged into a huge fight that was more about politics than science. They got tagged as political figures rather than dispassionate experts.
You can blame a lot of that on Trump and the GOP making pandemic measures into political issues. But the way medical professionals supported the George Floyd protests was a big mistake and a completely self-inflicted wound on the cause of expertise.
Isabel: How so?
Tom: As I say in the Atlantic excerpt, a vocal part of the medical community said: These protests are so important that they should be allowed to happen despite all of our advice warning against such gatherings.
To say this while people couldn’t go to church, get married, or bury their dead inflamed a lot of people, including me. (My brother died in a VA long-term-care facility at the start of the pandemic that was later at the center of a scandal about the mishandling of COVID measures, and we couldn’t lay him to rest for weeks.) Many doctors, who had argued that their advice was apolitical, made a nakedly political decision. Fauci, wisely, tried to stay neutral, but by late summer, the damage was done.
I don’t think we can say definitively whether the protests increased COVID cases, but the bigger problem is that the argument is a no-win trap for experts: If the doctors were concerned that the protests could spread the disease, then they shouldn’t have signed on to the protests. But if the protests were acceptable with the appropriate precautions, then the doctors and the public-health officials should have allowed gatherings for everyone willing to use the same measures.
Isabel: I was really struck by the quote you include from a member of the COVID Crisis Group: “Trump was a comorbidity.” Is there a world in which COVID didn’t get quite so politicized?
Tom: I think, given decades of narcissism, political polarization, and general distrust in government, a pandemic was always going to be politicized. But in my view, Trump’s personal influence and his mobilization of an entire political party around the demonization of expertise cost lives. It’s still a remarkable thing, and it astounds me that anyone would think of putting him back in any position of responsibility anywhere.
Isabel: Why is listening to experts the task of a responsible American citizen?
Tom: It’s not our task to obey experts without question, but, yes, listening is a requirement of being a citizen in a democracy. In the end, political leaders should, and do, have the last word and make the call on most things, including war and peace. But we are not a rabble. We don’t just all shout in the public square and then demand that the loudest voices carry the day. Experts give all of us, including our elected leaders, information we need to make decisions.
We can choose to ignore that advice. Experts can tell us about risks, and we can choose to take those risks. But if we simply block our ears and insist that we know better than everyone else because our gut, or some TV personality, or some politician, told us that we’re smarter than the experts, that’s on us.
Related:
Today’s News
- Forty people were killed and more than 100 wounded after gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue near the outskirts of Moscow, according to Russia’s top security agency.
- Kate Middleton announced that she is undergoing chemotherapy for an unspecified cancer discovered in tests after her abdominal surgery in January.
- The Senate is deliberating a $1.2 trillion spending bill, the passage of which would avoid a partial government shutdown at midnight.
Dispatches
- Atlantic Intelligence: Some computer-science students are being shielded from the liberal arts. That may be a problem for those studying AI in the future, Damon Beres writes.
- The Books Briefing: Reading can be a sensory experience that awakens your perception and, in turn, your emotions, Maya Chung writes.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
No Parent Can Make Home-Cooked Meals All the Time
By Yasmin Tayag
On Sunday evening, I fed a bowl of salmon, broccoli, and rice to my eight-month-old son. Or rather, I attempted to. The fish went flying; greens and grains splattered across the walls. Half an hour later, bedtime drew near, and he hadn’t eaten a thing. Exasperated, I handed him a baby-food pouch—and he inhaled every last drop of apple-raspberry-squash-carrot mush.
For harried parents like myself, baby pouches are a lifeline. These disposable plastic packets are sort of like Capri-Suns filled with blends of pureed fruits and vegetables …
But after my son slurped up all the goo and quickly went to sleep, I felt more guilty than relieved.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Watch. Sydney Sweeney’s performance in Immaculate (in theaters now) demonstrates just why the actor is becoming so unavoidable, David Sims writes.
Read. In a newly discovered letter to a college student, the playwright Arthur Miller explains one of his most famous works: Death of a Salesman.
P.S.
When Tom and I aren’t working on editions of The Daily, you can usually find us in intense debates about which movies from the 1970s and ’80s I’ve woefully neglected to watch. This past week, Tom lobbied for the 1978 Superman, with Christopher Reeve. I’ve long been more of a Batman fan, but Tom is persuasive in making his case (and tells me that it’s the first movie to include genuinely great flying scenes), so it may go on this weekend’s watch list.
— Isabel
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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