In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.
...More
Article
Frédéric Bouchard;
(2016)
The Roles of Institutional Trust and Distrust in Grounding Rational Deference to Scientific Expertise
(/isis/citation/CBB417241096/)
Article
Christian Ross;
(2022)
Handservant of Technocracy: Public Engagement and Expertise in Heritable Human Genome Editing
(/isis/citation/CBB828766557/)
Article
Stephen John;
(2022)
The Two Virtues of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB589589263/)
Article
Monamie Bhadra Haines;
(February 2019)
Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India
(/isis/citation/CBB710438620/)
Thesis
Pettis, Roy C., Jr.;
(2012)
When and How Presidents Use Scientific Expertise: Criteria for Success Derived from Selected Case Studies
(/isis/citation/CBB001560846/)
Book
Greene, Benjamin P.;
(2007)
Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-Ban Debate, 1945--1963
(/isis/citation/CBB000741904/)
Thesis
David Merritt Johns;
(2019)
Good Evidence, Bad Evidence: Science, Ethics, and the Politics of Making and Unmaking Public Health Policies
(/isis/citation/CBB199543025/)
Book
Fabiana Li;
(2015)
Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru
(/isis/citation/CBB165149143/)
Book
Andrew J. Hogan;
(2022)
Disability Dialogues: Advocacy, Science, and Prestige in Postwar Clinical Professions
(/isis/citation/CBB207448799/)
Article
Mott Greene;
(2022)
Experts, Managerialism, and Democratic Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB659481305/)
Article
Sheldon Krimsky;
(November 2015)
An Illusory Consensus behind GMO Health Assessment
(/isis/citation/CBB119149138/)
Book
David Demortain;
(2020)
The Science of Bureaucracy: Risk Decision-Making and the US Environmental Protection Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB170498113/)
Book
Alexa Geisthövel;
Volker Hess;
(2017)
Medizinisches Gutachten: Geschichte einer neuzeitlichen Praxis
(/isis/citation/CBB228276706/)
Article
Keller, Evelyn Fox;
(2011)
What Are Climate Scientists to Do?
(/isis/citation/CBB001220693/)
Article
Henry M. Cowles;
Chitra Ramalingam;
(2022)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB356636672/)
Thesis
VandeWall, Holly R.;
(2011)
Expertise and the Disunity of Science: A Case Study in the Difficulties of Providing Expert Advice for Policy
(/isis/citation/CBB001562723/)
Thesis
Rogers, Susan Nadia;
(2011)
Social Arrangements in Genomic Science: How Microarray Data and Researchers Shaped Each Other
(/isis/citation/CBB001562822/)
Article
Matthew Hayes;
Noah Morritt;
(2020)
Michael W. Burke-Gaffney and the UFO Debate in Atlantic Canada, 1947-1969
(/isis/citation/CBB417665220/)
Article
Carlo Martini;
Mattia Andreoletti;
(2021)
Genuine versus bogus scientific controversies: the case of statins
(/isis/citation/CBB565831259/)
Article
Federico Brandmayr;
(2021)
When Boundary Organisations Fail: Identifying Scientists and Civil Servants in L’Aquila Earthquake Trial
(/isis/citation/CBB058662495/)
Be the first to comment!