Experts Should Be on Tap, Not on Top!

John Adams,

The title to this article is from an alleged quote from Winston Churchill (and others) , and I couldn't agree more.  On August 25, 2020 Edward Feser published a Claremont Institute’s American Mind article entitled, Scientism: America’s State Religion, and he starts out saying: "We are hostages to the clerics of an intolerant faith."  An excellent article, though in reference to COVID-19 I wish to add a few observations of my own.

First, we must remember that as a society we no longer look to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our churches and community groups to deal with major challenges. We now immediately look to politicians, and most of all those politicians who wield the most power. Virtually all politicians have very little knowledge about anything in particular. Successful politicians have mastered a few skills: telling people what they want to hear, stating broad and mushy goals with which few can take issue, and most of all, getting themselves re-elected. The latter skill takes precedence above all else.

Politicians therefore must become great experts in avoiding taking blame for any error or any misfortune. They must always have ways of deferring the responsibility for making problematic decisions onto someone else, lest they be stigmatized by any poor outcome; yet all the while positioning themselves to take the credit for any successful outcome.

With COVID-19, politicians in general had zero expertise about viral epidemics. Hence they not only employed scientists, epidemiologists and doctors to provide guidance, they set up these “people of science” to take the blame for any bad outcomes.

In our hyper-emotive, hysterically individual-focused media environment, any bad outcome from a politically directed decision will immediately blow back on the politician. Grandma died? Video of the tearful family to follow (in PA, a Biden commercial showed a distraught woman blaming TRUMP for her elderly mother’s death in a nursing home because Trump predicted the virus would “blow over”, not Governor Wolf who ordered nursing homes to take infected patients from the hospital). Politician: Don’t blame me, I listened to the experts.

And with COVID-19, the shortcomings of the “experts” have been on full display. They knew little about their adversary, their predictive methods were shown to be arbitrary wild shots in the dark, their recommendations were often contradictory and irrational when applied to large groups or complex situations, etc.

But the “experts” served their purpose: they accepted blame shifting from weak and irresolute politicians who were completely inadequate to this challenge.

The sad part is that the “experts” have been so full of themselves and their unaccustomed power that they have willingly shouldered those burdens, and pretended that their knowledge and methods were up to the task. Instead of acknowledging their limitations, they arrogantly projected their facade of omniscience and omnipotence in directing public policy in a way never before attempted.

And that suited the politicians just fine.

Pennsylvania is a great example of this scenario. Governor Wolf has turned all authority over to our academically cloistered, economically ignorant, sadly confused Physician General, Dr Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine. In Pennsylvania, there is no broad forum to examine COVID-19 policies based upon medical, economic, social, and regional circumstances. Because if there was such a forum, Governor Wolf would be forced into making decisions for which he and his party could be blamed. Far better to turn everything over to his “expert” and fade into the background. With his media friends providing cover, he will be blameless at the end of the day for all the economic and social disasters of his policies. Because, you know, if we save just one life, it will all be worth it.. 

Nationally, this paradigm does not follow. Trump is perfectly capable of making hard decisions; and he has used the CDC and his medical experts to give guidance but not make binding decisions. While we cheered that Trump did not exceed his authority by making sweeping COVID-19 policy, we must acknowledge in retrospect that we lost our chance to bypass tin pot, chickenshit, blame shifting dictators like PA Governor Wolf, and his overreaching and intellectually/socially blinkered accomplice Dr. Levine.

I also want to say that any person of science with even the smallest grain of humility and intellectual honesty should immediately acknowledge Feyerabend’s arguments. Most published research simply can’t be replicated, and most of these failures are due to the many faults and limitations he describes.

Much science may illuminate small areas of interest, and be part of a halting and often unreliable progress in our understanding of our universe. The Einsteins, Newtons, and Watson/Cricks are very rare indeed (and we certainly would not have wanted any of them to make broad social policy). We also know that not only is our ability to observe an event limited by an absolute level of underlying uncertainty, but the very fact of our observation changes the event itself. Science itself has proven its limitations in studying our universe.