The End of Expertise?

(Photo/The Chronicle Review/Tim Foley)

By Katie MacDougall

We like to believe that facts speak for themselves. But across the country, trust in technical authorities, like climate scientists and economists, is disappearing. This erosion of trust is reshaping everything from public health decision-making to disaster preparedness to trade agreements, weakening our ability to solve the nation’s biggest problems at the scale that they demand. 

In my work on community engagement, I’ve seen this shift up close. At the South Battery Park City Resiliency project, I witnessed how community opposition to coastal resiliency was about credibility, not technicalities. 

In one community meeting, residents criticized the city’s coastal resiliency planners and technical consultants for being distant, political, and unaccountable. They accused these teams of favoring major developers rather than protecting southern Manhattan from catastrophic flooding. 

These dynamics reveal a central challenge: local governments must rebuild credibility by engaging communities early and transparently. To do so, they must respond directly to citizens’ concerns. Even the most well-designed policy will fail if it is not supported by the community it serves. This experience convinced me that complex policy can only survive if it is developed through a transparent process that is effectively shared with the public. 

My experience with the resiliency project mirrors the growing distrust of institutions in America’s political landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed that Americans’ faith in scientists’ impartiality has faltered. In April 2020, 12% of Americans reported having little confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests; by October 2023, that percentage had more than doubled to 27%. Americans worry that public health officials offer politicized advice shaped by their own biases, instead of providing neutral policy that aims to help citizens. 

Why has distrust intensified?  Communication failures play a major role. While 89% of Americans surveyed said that they considered scientists to be intelligent, just 45% felt that scientists were effective communicators. Americans trust that specialists may possess substantial knowledge about their field, but doubt their ability to translate that into meaningful policy. When communication breaks down, expertise becomes effectively useless. 

Political rhetoric also amplifies skepticism towards science. As of October 2024, roughly one in four Americans expressed distrust in scientific authorities. During the 2024 Vice Presidential debates, Vice President JD Vance said that scientists “have Ph.D.s, but they don’t have common sense and they don’t have wisdom.” When politicians dismiss the judgement of scientists and redefine who should be considered trustworthy, their constituents feel empowered to do so as well.

But skepticism about science is only part of the problem. Increasingly, Americans are questioning whether specialized expertise has any place in policy-making. As SIPA students, we know that scientists need to be in the situation room. But as recently as October 2024, 48% of Americans surveyed said that scientists should stay out of policy debates and instead focus on establishing sound scientific facts. But what good are facts if they never inform real world choices?  These surveys suggest a widening gap between what policies subject matter experts recommend and what the public actually wants or is willing to accept. 

To be effective, policy must resonate with people’s lived experiences, values, and concerns. For example, when gas prices rose after the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), economists attributed the increase to broader market forces. Members of the public, on the other hand, blamed the government’s energy policy for the rising gas prices. Both groups assessed the same outcomes from radically different perspectives: the public focused on the immediate, visible, and painful consequence of higher gas prices while economists evaluated NAFTA within a wider economic and policy context. In short, policies must be grounded in the real concerns and experiences of the public if they’re going to be accepted.

Rebuilding trust will take time. For instance, the Global Listening Project conducted focus groups in more than 70 countries to document people’s experiences during the pandemic. That data now helps policymakers create trust-building initiatives that meet communities where they are, making it more likely that the public will support future public health guidance.

Government agencies in New York have implemented similar plans: the NYC Department of Health created a Misinformation Response Unit during the pandemic to limit the spread of inaccurate and misleading information. They partnered with over 100 trusted community organizations to tailor culturally-specific messaging in the languages that New Yorkers spoke, which bolstered faith in the department. This model demonstrates that trust is built at the local level, oftentimes by voices outside of the government itself. 

Rebuilding trust will require a shift in how local and federal governments communicate with their constituents. This includes embedding community engagement earlier in the policymaking process, communicating in plain language, and partnering with trusted local advocates rather than relying solely on official channels. The Coastal Resiliency project offers a useful example: the project team implemented biweekly construction notices and maintained a 24/7 hotline that was responsive to questions from the public.

In a moment when uncertainty is high and trust is fragile, turning away from science-backed policy would leave our communities more vulnerable. Expertise, when paired with transparency and genuine engagement, remains one of the strongest tools that we have to solve the complex policy challenges facing us. 

Rebuilding trust isn’t the job of the government alone. Each of us can help by questioning our own assumptions as rigorously as we may question others and supporting institutions that ground their decisions in evidence. If we expect expert guidance to matter, we must create the conditions in our own civic lives where we can be heard.