MISTRUST OF EXPERTS BY POPULISTS AND POLITICIANS

This chapter reviews sources of the mistrust of experts, expert advice, and the associated institutions as it pertains to populist and other groups that mistrust or reject mainstream sources of expertise. It focuses on the scientific-technological domain, though similar issues arise in other domains. It considers three models of expertise: the call-and-response model, consisting of an intentional relationship between a producer and consumer of expertise; the architectural model, which seeks to assemble the right kinds of experts and even institutions; and the acoustical model, where the movement of expertise occurs in a nonneutral hermeneutical (sense-making) space in which voices are heard and interpreted differentially. Experts do not speak from nowhere to just anyone; their acoustics are correlated with an audience that has a particular set of preexisting commitments and connections with the experts. Mistrust of experts can happen via what Miranda Fricker has called “hermeneutical injustice,” in which gaps or flaws in our tools of social interpretation result in the production of impoverished social meanings. Understanding the mistrust of experts requires investigating the relation between expert counsel and the hermeneutical space that is already in place before the expert findings are presented, as well as the nonneutrality and sometimes deliberate distortions that can affect that space.