The problem with expertise—and the dark side of the equation “knowledge = power.” Experts
are not infallible. Treating them as such has done us all a grave disservice—and as The
Weaponization of Expertise makes painfully clear given rise to the very populism that
all-knowing experts and their elite coterie decry. Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson use
the devastating example of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate their case revealing how the
hubris of all-too-human experts undermined—perhaps irreparably—public faith in elite
policymaking. Paradoxically by turning science into dogmatism the overweening elite response
has also proved deeply corrosive of expertise itself—in effect doing exactly what elite
policymakers accuse their critics of doing. A much-needed corrective to a dangerous blind
faith in expertise The Weaponization of Expertise identifies a cluster of pathologies that
have enveloped many institutions meant to help referee expert knowledge in particular a
disavowal of the doubt uncertainty and counterarguments that are crucial to the accumulation
of knowledge. At a time when trust in expertise and faith in institutions are most needed and
most lacking this work issues a stark reminder that a crisis of misinformation may well begin
at the top.
