DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Weaponization of Expertise

How Elites Fuel Populism

Dennis Patterson author Jacob Hale Russell author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:MIT Press Ltd

Publishing:4th Mar '25

£27.00

This title is due to be published on 4th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

The Weaponization of Expertise cover

The problem with expertise and the dark side of the equation knowledge = power. Experts are not infallible. Treating them as such has done us all a grave disservice and, as The Weaponization of Expertise makes painfully clear, given rise to the very populism that all-knowing experts and their elite coterie decry. Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson use the devastating example of the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate their case, revealing how the hubris of all-too-human experts undermined perhaps irreparably public faith in elite policymaking. Paradoxically, by turning science into dogmatism, the overweening elite response has also proved deeply corrosive of expertise itself in effect, doing exactly what elite policymakers accuse their critics of doing. A much-needed corrective to a dangerous blind faith in expertise, The Weaponization of Expertise identifies a cluster of pathologies that have enveloped many institutions meant to help referee expert knowledge, in particular a disavowal of the doubt, uncertainty, and counterarguments that are crucial to the accumulation of knowledge. At a time when trust in expertise and faith in institutions are most needed and most lacking, this work issues a stark reminder that a crisis of misinformation may well begin at the top.

ISBN: 9780262049597

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

336 pages