The Weaponization of Expertise

by Jacob Hale RussellDennis Patterson (M.I.T.)

Nonfiction

This critical examination of technocratic expertise approaches the covid-19 pandemic as a case study of what happens when tolerance for open-ended inquiry is restricted. There was something “deeply ironic” about liberals’ formulation of support for science as a religious creed, Russell and Patterson observe; in a time of crisis, this support veered toward dogma, and veneration of expertise became a shibboleth on the left. The authors decry the marginalization of dissenting voices, pointing to deplatformings that they consider “intellectual tyranny.” Their persuasive account illustrates how tentative conclusions proclaimed by the powerful can harden into orthodoxies