Steve Templeton

Because experts failed so miserably to live up to the public and media’s magical thinking the last three years, the word “expert” has lost a lot of its meaning, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Experts are terrible at predictions and don’t have much knowledge outside of their often narrow fields of interest. In a very complex situation such as a pandemic, there will not be any one person who has a deep understanding of what’s happening at any given moment, much less the ability to predict what will happen next. 

The pandemic opened the curtain to expose the folly of expert worship. Experts are just as fallible and prone to biases, toxic groupthink and political influence as anyone else. This recognition might make people uneasy. However, it should also force a sense of responsibility to search for the truth despite what the experts might say, and that’s a good thing.

Image: Rita Morais @ Unsplash