The death of expertise
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why do so many people think they know best? And are they putting dolts in charge of government?
Ed Butler speaks to Professor Tom Nichols of the US Naval War College, himself an expert on national security, who wrote a book about why everyone from surgeons to electricians to academics find themselves under attack from novices and ignoramuses who think their opinions should have equal weight.
We also hear from Michael Lewis, whose new book The Fifth Risk examines the extent to which President Trump has neglected the US civil service. Is there a risk of something going catastrophically wrong - for example a nuclear waste containment or a natural disaster response - through the sheer inattention and incompetence of the people put in charge? Plus, might the root of the problem be the Dunning-Kruger Effect - a psychological trait whereby the inept are unaware of their own ineptness? We ask Professor David Dunning from the University of Michigan.
Producer: Laurence Knight
Repeat. First broadcast on 13 November 2018.
(Picture: Two-year-old girl plays with carpentry tools; Credit: lisegagne/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today we are examining a curious global phenomenon, much observed, but not so commonly stare down directly. Why do so many people think trained experts are wrong? |
| 0:18.8 | We are just educated enough to think that we are educated quite a lot. |
| 0:23.5 | Universal literacy, which is a great achievement of the modern world, |
| 0:27.9 | has also convinced people that they know more than they know. |
| 0:31.6 | Yep, the democratization of knowledge are themed today, |
| 0:34.9 | why it's led so many to think they know more than they actually |
| 0:38.1 | do. Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:44.1 | People often talk, don't they, about new eras, a time of radical change, upheaval, even populist |
| 0:49.5 | revolt. But if that means anything, it may mean above all there's a new era in which experts, |
| 0:55.8 | those formerly unchallenged peons of knowledge, of science, of economics and medicine, |
| 1:01.7 | they, for so many, are no longer considered quite so expert. |
| 1:06.4 | We thought more than two world wars against dictatorships. |
| 1:09.7 | We don't like being told what to do. |
| 1:11.2 | There's too much scaremongering from so-called experts. There's too many organisations and businesses |
| 1:18.0 | that all they do is study graphs and take polls and they just seem to make a living out of it. |
| 1:25.8 | And I don't believe that they know best. I don't think they know best. |
| 1:29.9 | Well, they're just ordinary people, but unfortunately they get stuck in this little bubble of what they're doing. |
| 1:35.9 | Some UK punters with their opinions there, but as you may have guessed, this is a worldwide phenomenon. |
| 1:42.0 | Experts and their facts are simply no longer believed. Before the US |
| 1:45.5 | 2016 election, for example, two-thirds of Trump supporters said they distrusted official economic |
| 1:51.6 | data. In Britain, before the Brexit referendum, most Brexiters thought the government was concealing |
| 1:57.1 | real immigration numbers. How widespread is all of this disbelief? Well, wide enough |
... |
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