n the Spring of 2020, the world’s governments scrambled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic; virologists and epidemiologists, economists and public health experts were flung into the spotlight.
At daily televised briefings, scientific experts stood side-by-side with political leaders, many of whom promised to ‘follow the science.’ Were we seeing experts reclaim their place at the centre of decision-making? Many op-eds and headlines speculated so.
Yet for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every handful of expert-led press conferences, sprung an anti-lockdown protest or conspiracy theory. While vaccine and Covid-deniers are in a small minority, their views can be loud and troubling.
If your job is to produce, validate, or share knowledge at a mainstream, traditional institution—let’s say a university, research institute, or think tank—you might feel despairing. How can the world tackle a pandemic when some citizens aren’t convinced of its existence? Indeed, how can our societies move forward when different groups live in such different realities?
In healthy democracies, disagreement is an absolute necessity. We must be able to debate what events mean and how we must respond. Yet now, we regularly find ourselves debating whether or not the events themselves have actually taken place.
That’s because our information environment is vastly different to the way it was 30 years ago. Today the challenge is not finding information, but filtering and validating it. Pushed along by a tide of information, many of us resort to following our intuition. We make decisions based on what feels right.
We also follow our intuition when it comes to judging who is or is not an expert. A large proportion of Americans look at the length of time someone has been doing the job when assessing their credibility. Yet almost as many want to know whether or not the expert has had ‘personal experience’ of the topic they are discussing.
Meanwhile, a key reason Americans distrust experts is when they don’t seem transparent about their allegiances. Another is failing to ‘make sense.’
In this environment, experts must be experienced and trustworthy. But they must also show their humanity and be good communicators.
Because it’s not always clear that experts are people. Traditionally, experts have remained cool, detached in a way of communicating objectivity. But some are suspicious of that detachment. To them, these aloof experts become a symbol of shady establishment control. Nobody stands nowhere, after all. And pretending otherwise appears suspect.
Meanwhile, experts are not always expert communicators. Many are unable to help others grasp counter-intuitive evidence, or offer ways to accommodate new information into an existing worldview. This makes them far too easy to ignore.
We can dismiss distrust in experts as a symptom of a populist age. But what if we showed curiosity instead? What might people need from experts that they aren’t getting? Is it a sense of who they are and where they are coming from? Is it a way of talking about topics that illustrates why they care and, therefore, why others should?
This approach helps us interpret polling that shows more and more people turning towards ‘alternative experts.’ These are relatable characters. They might have extreme views or a caustic way of communicating, but they seem up front, at least, about who they are and what they think. They tell it like it is.
The challenges of our current information environment can’t be solved by experts alone. They can’t be expected to fix the avalanche of fake news, the onset of deep fakes, and the fact that we can now find facts to support just about any position. But experts can’t insist on remaining detached and rational—staying outside the fray and hoping it all calms down. That’s because experts do not exist outside of society. They are humans and citizens, too.
About the data: Cast From Clay interviewed n=1,011 American adults aged 18+ in July 2022, via online panel survey, on their perceptions of democracy, facts, expertise and the information environment. Respondents were screened and weighted to be nationally representative of age, gender and region. The margin of error on the study is +/- 3.1%.
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What Place for Experts in the Post-Truth Era?
Photo by Richard Ciraulo via Unsplash.
January 16, 2023
Today, the challenge is not finding information, but filtering and validating it. In this environment, experts must be experienced and trustworthy, and they must also show their humanity and be good communicators, writes Cast From Clay’s Tom Hashemi.
I
n the Spring of 2020, the world’s governments scrambled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic; virologists and epidemiologists, economists and public health experts were flung into the spotlight.
At daily televised briefings, scientific experts stood side-by-side with political leaders, many of whom promised to ‘follow the science.’ Were we seeing experts reclaim their place at the centre of decision-making? Many op-eds and headlines speculated so.
Yet for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every handful of expert-led press conferences, sprung an anti-lockdown protest or conspiracy theory. While vaccine and Covid-deniers are in a small minority, their views can be loud and troubling.
If your job is to produce, validate, or share knowledge at a mainstream, traditional institution—let’s say a university, research institute, or think tank—you might feel despairing. How can the world tackle a pandemic when some citizens aren’t convinced of its existence? Indeed, how can our societies move forward when different groups live in such different realities?
In healthy democracies, disagreement is an absolute necessity. We must be able to debate what events mean and how we must respond. Yet now, we regularly find ourselves debating whether or not the events themselves have actually taken place.
That’s because our information environment is vastly different to the way it was 30 years ago. Today the challenge is not finding information, but filtering and validating it. Pushed along by a tide of information, many of us resort to following our intuition. We make decisions based on what feels right.
We also follow our intuition when it comes to judging who is or is not an expert. A large proportion of Americans look at the length of time someone has been doing the job when assessing their credibility. Yet almost as many want to know whether or not the expert has had ‘personal experience’ of the topic they are discussing.
Meanwhile, a key reason Americans distrust experts is when they don’t seem transparent about their allegiances. Another is failing to ‘make sense.’
In this environment, experts must be experienced and trustworthy. But they must also show their humanity and be good communicators.
Because it’s not always clear that experts are people. Traditionally, experts have remained cool, detached in a way of communicating objectivity. But some are suspicious of that detachment. To them, these aloof experts become a symbol of shady establishment control. Nobody stands nowhere, after all. And pretending otherwise appears suspect.
Meanwhile, experts are not always expert communicators. Many are unable to help others grasp counter-intuitive evidence, or offer ways to accommodate new information into an existing worldview. This makes them far too easy to ignore.
We can dismiss distrust in experts as a symptom of a populist age. But what if we showed curiosity instead? What might people need from experts that they aren’t getting? Is it a sense of who they are and where they are coming from? Is it a way of talking about topics that illustrates why they care and, therefore, why others should?
This approach helps us interpret polling that shows more and more people turning towards ‘alternative experts.’ These are relatable characters. They might have extreme views or a caustic way of communicating, but they seem up front, at least, about who they are and what they think. They tell it like it is.
The challenges of our current information environment can’t be solved by experts alone. They can’t be expected to fix the avalanche of fake news, the onset of deep fakes, and the fact that we can now find facts to support just about any position. But experts can’t insist on remaining detached and rational—staying outside the fray and hoping it all calms down. That’s because experts do not exist outside of society. They are humans and citizens, too.
About the data: Cast From Clay interviewed n=1,011 American adults aged 18+ in July 2022, via online panel survey, on their perceptions of democracy, facts, expertise and the information environment. Respondents were screened and weighted to be nationally representative of age, gender and region. The margin of error on the study is +/- 3.1%.
