Tom Nichols and his most of his expert friends advocated for the Iraq War and faced zero consequences for doing so. I think if we want to really understand waning trust in the ruling class we could do worse than start there.
I think that's one of the big problems with how people are approaching experts in this climate. 'Dr. Fauci was wrong about that one thing, now I'm only going to listen to Dr. Oz!' We're in a weird place where people expect experts to be right 100% of the time in situations with murky or evolving information or in subjective calls. When experts are wrong people turn to people with no expertise who say things they like.
There's room to disagree with experts, there's room for experts to be wrong sometimes. But the problem is people lining up to follow people who have little to no expertise at all and elevating them over experts. Even worse, people are growing actively hostile to expertise when it advocates something that they don't like.
That's right, and I think as you've hinted at they hold these people to a much lower standard than they hold the experts.
If Dr. Oz was wrong about one thing 6 months ago, that doesn't shake their belief in him the same way it did Dr. Fauci.
When someone is completely wrong on a matter that is central to their supposed expertise, and there are terrible consequences for humanity, they shouldn’t get a pass just because they went to Harvard or wrote some books or held important positions in the government. That doesn’t mean it’s better to listen to Dr. Oz instead, but it is better to find new experts to listen to.
This may not happen often enough, but that is part of the scrutiny and accountability that should come part and parcel with being a renowned expert.
https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/journal/17_1/ro...