).
Tom Nichols takes his own advice (The Atlantic):
I’ve spent years telling people, usually with exasperation and a certain amount of petulance, to trust experts and to stop obsessing about the rarity of their failure. But that was before a crisis in which millions of lives were dependent on a working relationship between science and government. Now that I must take my own advice, I feel the same anxiety I’ve so often dismissed in others. We—and I’m including myself here—need to come back to our senses about expertise.
My gut instincts are much like those of any other American. When my wife and I became eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations in our state, we plowed through different locations and times trying to capture an appointment. When we finally nailed down a date, I blurted out, as if it mattered: “Which vaccine is it?” I immediately ran through questions in my head. Do I trust the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Do I prefer one shot to two? Are Moderna’s data more reliable than Pfizer’s?
Perhaps most important: Do I have any idea what I am talking about?
No. Not really. Nichols is a political scientist. Meaning “not a ‘scientist’ at all,” he admits. But like others, he tends to obsess over the flood sometimes of contradictory data that he is unequipped to evaluate.
Yes, experts sometimes make mistakes. Thirty-five years ago, a bad decision at the launch pad ended in the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. But those spectacular failures are rare. Mixed signals about how to prevent and treat COVID-19 left many people confused and edgy thjis last year. “But when the pandemic recedes—and after we have reflected on all of this death and heartbreak—we’ll need to recover some perspective and learn once again when to put aside gut instincts and listen to the people who know what they’re doing,” Nichols writes.
And stop going to Google to self-diagnose, I’d add.
Partway through Nichols’ essay, I recalled a passage from somewhere (I’ll kick myself when I remember) in which the author was talking about computers with another passenger on a commercial flight. The great thing about computers, said the guy in the next seat, was you can always turn them off. But considering he was seated in an aluminum tube in an air traffic pattern with dozens of other planes, and it was computers keeping them from running into each other and falling from the sky, the author decided he really did not want to turn them off.
Nichols offers a similar anecdote about a submarine, and continues:
The best experts help us find the sweet spot between our gut and our brain by explaining processes, risks, and benefits in ways that we can understand. The questions we pose to those experts are an important part of establishing a trusting relationship with them. But we must consider whether we are asking questions that are meaningful and intended to help us reach a decision, or whether we are asking questions to enjoy a temporary sense of empowerment. We should focus on useful inquiries that are guides to action: Do these vaccines have side effects? If I need two shots, how long can I wait between getting them? How long will immunity last? What can I do after I’m vaccinated?
We must also ask whether we distrust particular individuals or whether our beef is with the entire system. A certain amount of skepticism toward elected officials—who have a vested interest in being reelected—is normal. But in our polarized time, this distrust has become extreme. When President Joe Biden said that he thought the Fourth of July was a good target date for the return of small gatherings, many of his critics went ballistic: Who is Joe Biden to tell me what to do?
But Nichols trusts that Joe Biden is listening to experts. He could not muster the same trust when it came to Donald Trump. But he trusts scientists “not because they wear a white jacket or have certificates on their wall, but because I have confidence in the educational and scientific infrastructure that created them.”
Flying in low/no visibility means having to rely on instruments, not on your gut. Your senses don’t work in there. In situations like this pandemic, we have to rely on experts who know what we do not. Admitting we don’t know better is a good start.