In January 2017 The New Yorker ran a cartoon by Will McPhail. A passenger stands in the aisle of a plane and says: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” All around him, hands go up.
I think media built for engagement helped put that passenger in the aisle. Attention pays, and few things hold attention like someone taking on the experts. People learn to suspect and challenge specialists, which is healthy, and to do it in an improper way, which is not. Tom Nichols called the result the death of expertise.
The numbers are less dramatic but real. Pew found 87% of Americans confident in scientists in April 2020 and 76% in 2024.
Experts share the blame. When they bicker in public, ordinary people hear noise, not a debate. One study found that people exposed to contradictory nutrition news grew more confused and came to doubt dietary advice in general.
Experts must disagree. That is how knowledge improves. But they ought to frame their disagreements with more civility, and say first what they agree on. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s patient, line-by-line review of an amateur’s physics, which I describe under Dunning-Kruger, is the model. Respect for the listener is part of the expert’s job.