This is the sort of book I knew I would resonate with the moment I read the title—a guilty pleasure of sorts.

Nichols’ argument is simple. People today not only disdain ‘experts’ and ‘academics,’ they take pride in their ignorance. Nichols had plenty of examples to draw from—from the celebrity anti-vaccine crusade of Jenny McCarthy, to the ‘health’ advice of Gwyneth Paltrow and her legion of Goop, to the ‘journalism’ of Vox Media, to the ‘expertise’ of Donald Trump.

Other less popular examples are more frightening. University of California professor Peter Duesberg argued in the early 1990s that AIDS was not caused by HIV. This fringe view was adopted by Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, who rejected offers of drugs to combat the disease in his country. As a consequence, some 300,000 lives were lost.

There is a psychological phenomenon at play here called the “Dunning-Kruger Effect,” identified in a 1999 study.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, in sum, means that the dumber you are, the more confident you are that you’re not actually dumb. Dunning and Kruger more gently label such people as “unskilled” or “incompetent.” But that doesn’t change their central finding: “Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.” (44)

The least-competent people in the world are least likely to recognize their own incompetence. Or, put positively(?), the more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.

In the interest of fairness, Nichols includes a chapter entitled, “When the Experts Are Wrong.” Fraud and incompetence plague even the most stringent disciplines. On the whole, however, experts advance knowledge despite some highly publicized failures.

The Death of Expertise is an interesting, if depressing read. Expecting a bit of hope in the concluding chapter, I was met with this:

I do not intend to end this book on such a note of pessimism, but I am not sure I have much choice. Most causes of ignorance can be overcome, if people are willing to learn. Nothing, however, can overcome the toxic confluence of arrogance, narcissism, and cynicism that Americans now wear like full suit of armor against the efforts of experts and professionals.” (234)

This book is an accurate plainspoken diagnosis, even if the prognosis looks grim!

Nichols, Tom. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. 2017. Oxford UP, 2019.