Excellent book but one that came out very very late. Same as with Jill Japore's book on mind-messing spin-based companies this one came too late, at least for public to read. Experts knew about this but let it roll and that brings us to our current times.

Book covers everything - failures in the society from general feeling-first approach to things (reason, dont need it because you need to be passionate about.... who cares, just deny everything else that you do not agree with), failure of education, mass media and web that became full circus that cannot be trusted at all any more (because everybody needs to be an activist - again that feeling-first approach) and utter breakage of society which does not know where the head or tail is, and of course does not know what equality and democracy are (last part of the book was especially on the point).

One of the main failures of expertise is that experts decided to treat their fellow countryman/layman as children (which is something that mentioned countryman/layman so want to be - which is something that is completely mind numbing to me). As a result just look at last year - nobody from power even thinks twice about what they are saying to the people (WE will tell you what to do! YOU are guilty for all of this! Declamations and rhetoric that would make Stalin blush, not to mention [again] activism because hey these are our guys! Yeeee!), they do not think about when message is supposed to go out to public and when there is need to wait a bit (again, last year, all those MDs and experts - saying contradictory things every 2 weeks) and are more than ready to gas-light people for the sake of it (do-this-and-you-will-be safe followed by "even if you do this it will be years (years people) before we even go back if we ever do") to the now raising cults of personalities that puts North Korea to shame (populists unite).

Providing drama to the populace that craves it (which is something that is sickening in itself) is one of the greatest sins of experts.

It seems that people chose hippie/age-of-aquarius as a way of living loooong time ago. Fortunately reason and critical thinking that built up in last 300 years (lets just take most recent developments in sciences - technical, math and sociology - in general this was accumulation of thousands of years) took like 60 years to decompose in the currently existing mush. That is quite a result if you ask me, sense and sanity endured for a looong time. But I guess when you enter the period where adults want to be kids and behave like spoiled children in toy store, reason plays no role.

And then power grab happens - technocrats took the opportunity and oh boy what additional mess they made (because, again, everybody needs to be an activist for a cause (whatever this might be), you need to be passionate (one of the most poisonous words today)).

Good thing these periods will pass and humanity will come back to its senses. Hopefully not like in beginning of Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Highly recommended. ( )

Tom Nichols was a working academic and taught international relations (and military history). He was affiliated with the American Republican party. His 2017 book, The Death of Expertise expands from his article in 2014 in the modern conservative online journal The Federalist.
The book present an argument about the effects of the internet, social media and modern ideas about equality on the acquisition of knowledge. The author asserts that people who have earned advanced university degrees who are employed as university-level teachers have earned more respect that they get in debates in American institutions.
His criticism of the Internet and internet projects like Wikipedia is not argued in detail. He relies on the meritocratic assumtion that a crowd of recognized experts has more knowlege than a random crowd of Americans, and it more likely to have a more accurate understanding of how the world works.
The author does not explain the methods and the consensus of the political science of international relations, or explain how international relations or other humanities and social sciences can be compared with disciplines that are grounded in the physical facts of the real world or should be "respected" by less educated citizens. ( )

This is an important and worthwhile book about the decline in knowledge of much of the American populace, along with the accompanying decline in literacy and civic awareness, and the increase in wilful ignorance and its glorification. Taken together, all of these have led to the disconnect between much of the populace and the experts in many fields upon which our democratic republic depends. The value and necessity of experts is discussed and dissected, IMHO, very well. ( )

This book was great until the last chapter when the author's pessimism and cynicism got away from him. Much of what he does in the last chapter is rant and does not relate the content back to the premise of the book established in previous chapters. In the VERY last section, he seems to step back and attempt to redeem himself, but it was too little, too late. ( )

Nichols examines the rise in mistrust or outright dismissal of the "expert" in public, academic, and political life. Psychological and sociological reasons for suspicion of expertise, or perhaps more accurately, the elevation of all opinions as equally valuable, is explored. The ubiquity of information easily accessible on the internet is also convincingly argued to be quite different than true understanding of any given issue. Nichols provides numerous examples of how the dismissal of the role of expert is found within American society, and appeals for the acceptance (and necessity) of expertise in order to have a functioning society. The rejection of expertise is especially a danger, believes Nichols, to (American) democratic society, where the public have become unable to discern how little they really know about issues that affect them a great deal.

This is an engaging read (or in this case, listen, since I used the audiobook). The illustrations served to enforce the main argument that expertise has an important role to play in society, and we simply need to accept that some people know much more about and are better at some things than we are. This doesn't make the expert infallible, but usually a far more reliable resource than popular opinion and gut intuition. This book, however, will likely resonate far more with professionals trained in a particular field than those suspicious of the expert, and so will likely not change many minds. ( )