An Inquiry into Declining Expert Trust

“I think the people in this country have had enough of experts… people from organizations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” If you have read anything about Brexit, you have already heard this infamous quote spoken by the Justice Secretary Michael Gove in an interview for Sky News four years ago. These words preceded the National Referendum Vote determining the UK’s membership in the EU occurring twenty days later that seemingly confirmed the Justice Secretary’s haunting prediction. The citizens of the United Kingdom, against the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and countless other respected economic, financial, and governmental institutions, voted to leave the European Union. 

These words of the Justice Secretary loomed over the country, as the vote shined a huge spotlight on the general trend of declining trust in expert opinions. Surveys conducted by the international research data and analytics group YouGov shortly before the Brexit vote confirmed this rising populist sentiment. “Leave” voters exhibited higher levels of distrust than “remain” voters for every category of expert polled. This outcome is nothing unexpected, especially given the rhetoric used by the leaders of the Brexit movement. However, the results also uncover the more alarming reality that “remain” voters demonstrate surprisingly low levels of trust in their politicians, economists, and civil servants as well.

In an article for the Washington Post aptly entitled 9 out of 10 experts agree: Britain doesn’t trust the experts on Brexit, the head of political and social research at YouGov, Joe Twyman, explains this trend saying that “leave” voters “believe experts never get it right. If you’re a ‘remain’ voter, you believe that experts don’t always get it wrong.”  However, the common denominator in these responses is the underlying feeling that experts in particular areas are getting things wrong, often. 

This widespread sentiment is certainly not without foundation and expands far beyond one vote in the United Kingdom four years ago. This generation witnessed as the central banks and entire financial system failed to predict the Financial Crisis of 2008. The polling and political experts failed to predict the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. Not to mention the impact of the unstemmable explosion of the internet; a platform on which anyone can masquerade as an expert in any subject they please. The internet creates the appealing illusion that due to the accessibility of unlimited information, a few google searches will make you an expert in anything. This idea is fairly dangerous in a generation already conditioned to seek instant gratification. This tendency causes individuals to be more inclined to choose the first answer that pops up or one that conforms to his or her pre-existing set of ideals than to spend days sorting through all of the relevant information. 

However, to be fair, no one has the time available to learn everything about everything. There are simply not enough hours in the day and the cost of sacrificing other valuable alternatives, such as work, family gatherings, and hobbies, is too high to justify it. This reality points to the importance and role of experts in a highly specialized society. The fundamental sacrifice of living in a highly specialized economy is your inevitable dependency on others within the system. For example, a typical American would not understand how his or her food reached the grocery store, how his or her house was constructed, or how the integral technology to his or her profession even works. This citizen is dependent on the skills possessed and effort expended by all of the other actors in the economy to receive these goods and services. Renowned economist Thomas Sowell, in his book Knowledge and Decisions, cuts to the heart of this issue writing, “it is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.” 

And it is this hyper specialization that opens the door for incredible advances in all fields and the overall quality of life. Freed from the daily obligation of being the sole producer to meet his or her needs, inventors can develop new technologies that allow us to contact one another millions of miles away, scientists can develop new treatments for illnesses to save lives, and I can simply have the time to read an interesting book. 

However, the act of voting presents a challenge to the positive benefits of specialization when millions of people, most of whom engage in highly specific occupations not related to public policy and governance, are given the task of choosing the best person to lead this complex apparatus. Voting runs contrary to the behavior conditioned by a specialized society with instantaneous access to information. The voter is expected to assess an expansive breadth of very complex issues to make one binary decision, instead of having an in-depth understanding of one very specific area. This explanation underlines the integral nature of experts in advising such an abstract and generalized decision in order to provide that specific insight only gained from years of study and experience. 

Unfortunately, there are numerous forces working against voters accepting the advice provided by experts. As touched on earlier, experts have made mistakes in the past and the internet creates an endless stream of information available for you “to be your own expert”. Furthermore, the American populism rooted in equal rights and voting asserts that since everyone has an equal voice in voting, then everyone’s opinion is equal. In the words of Pro-Brexit MP Gisela Stuart ,“there is only one expert that matters… and that’s you, the voter.” However, in such a specialized society, everyone’s opinion in every subject is necessarily not equal. I would not trust my doctor’s opinion on the most effective way to repair the engine in my car as much as my mechanic’s, nor would I trust my mechanic’s assessment of my health as much as my doctor’s. Then, why would every individual voter have knowledge equivalent to that of an economist and public policy expert? Additionally, partisan actors on both sides make it increasingly difficult for well-intentioned voters to rely on expert advice by routinely using “their experts” to support their claims. Dr. Matt Motta, a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, summarized this frustrating cycle commenting, “both sides still tend to appeal to experts when it’s convenient for them, when the experts agree with what they have to say.” 

Confronted by the endless internet, partisan experts, and populist sentiment, it is unsurprising that many voters feel heard by politicians directing them to disregard the words of experts and rely solely on their own intuition. However, the reality in a society run by specialization speaks to the opposite truth that our strength rests on our trust of fellow members of the economy to contribute their expertise to its continued advancement. 

Works Cited:

Bruinius, Harry. Who made you an expert? Is American’s distrust of ‘elites’ becoming more toxic?. The Christian Monitor. 27 August 2018. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/0827/Who-made-you-an-expert-Is-America-s-distrust-of-elites-becoming-more-toxic

Curtice, John. New research uncovers the reasons why the Remain campaign failed to convince enough voters of economic case to stay in the EU. National Centre for Social Research. https://whatukthinks.org/eu/media-centre/new-research-uncovers-the-reasons-why-the-remain-campaign-failed-to-convince-enough-voters-of-economic-case-to-stay-in-the-eu/

Matthews, David. Why Academics were Ignored. Times Higher Education. 7 July 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/07/british-academics-consider-why-they-were-ignored-brexit-debate

Nace, Trevor. The Growing Public Mistrust Of Experts In A Digital Age. Science Trends. 29 August 2017. https://sciencetrends.com/growing-public-mistrust-experts-digital-age/

Nichols, Tom and James K.A. Smith. The Death of Expertise as a Decline of Trust. Comment. 1 March 2017. https://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/the-death-of-expertise-as-a-decline-of-trust/

Runciman, David. Why Replacing Politicians with Experts is a Reckless Idea. The Guardian. 1 May 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/01/why-replacing-politicians-with-experts-is-a-reckless-idea

Shaw, Julia. The Real Reason that We Don’t Trust Experts Anymore. Independent. 8 July 2016. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-real-reason-that-we-don-t-trust-experts-a7126536.html

Wood, Matt. The political dilemma of expertise – More than just public trust in experts. The London School of Economics and Political Science. 17 June 2019.  https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/06/17/the-political-dilemma-of-expertise-more-than-just-public-trust-in-experts/