Experts don't always know best

In one of the most dramatic moments of the Senate confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked the judge, "Can you provide a definition for the word 'woman'?"

After a brief hesitation, Jackson responded, "I'm not a biologist."

Now on its face, that is a silly remark because you don't need a biologist to define what a woman is. (The percentage of babies born with indeterminate sex, in which a medical evaluation is necessary, is less than 1%). But upon consideration, it was actually a clever response, basically the only answer available to Jackson that would avoid enraging either the Republican senators or her progressive allies. It was a prudent non-answer.

Yet, putting aside for a minute the nominee's predicament before the Senate, Jackson's answer provides a window into the current role conferred on experts and how reliance on experts may be encroaching into territory that was once within the purview of common sense.

For those on Twitter who are waiting to pounce with a charge that I'm minimizing the importance of experts, let me state the obvious: A functioning society depends on experts. They are indispensable to every profession for tasks ranging from developing essential software to building bridges to performing cardiac surgery.

But in an ever more complex society, have we run the risk of becoming overly dependent on experts — delegating decisions and responsibilities to them that are outside their domain?

The danger is quite simply this: Experts are human. Some are modest and self-effacing; others crave attention, money and power. When the latter group enters the public forum because "we rely on them," there is trouble ahead. Politicians court their favor and flatter them with public money and posts that are often little more than sinecures. In return, those politicians use their expert opinions to advance political aims.

There is an aphorism that if you put a cup of soup in a bowl of garbage, it's garbage. And if you put a cup of garbage in a bowl of soup, it's garbage. Along those lines, if you inject politics into science, it's politics. And if you inject science into politics, it's politics.

When politics become a consideration, the temptation for experts to abandon objective interpretations of scientific data is undeniable. Witness how, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health authorities deemed some political rallies safer than others based on nothing other than the cause the rally supported. No matter that in any case, tens of thousands of people who practiced limited distancing came from all over the country to shout and chant, thereby possibly spreading the virus. Experts determined that in terms of safety, what mattered was the cause. There was nothing scientific about that.

The situation becomes even more parlous when experts are permitted to make public policy, and governments hide behind those they appointed. Margaret Thatcher once said, "Advisers advise, ministers decide." But during the COVID-19 pandemic, not only the United Kingdom but also the U.S. and most of the world seemed to eschew that dictum.

In retrospect, the plan of public health authorities to lock down society "to flatten the curve" seems to have been a monumental act of hubris, considering the effects on the economy and especially on young people. The public health community failed to recognize that others like economists and business leaders had to be consulted to assess the complex trade-offs.

The best illustration of what can happen when expertise morphs into a political tool is when Soviet leader Josef Stalin made one scientist, Trofim Lysenko, the arbiter of all Soviet agricultural science in the 1930s. Any scientist who criticized him was criticizing the Communist Party and the state itself. That political faith in Lysenko's junk science caused mass starvation and the destruction of the careers of many dissenting but honest Soviet scientists. It slowed the progress of Soviet science for decades.

We have crossed the Rubicon regarding our dependence on experts when a smart, Harvard-educated Supreme Court justice cites the need for a biologist to define womanhood. Think how far afield this is from 1965, when Bob Dylan penned a seminal lyric for the Vietnam generation:

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Dylan was in effect telling a rebellious Vietnam generation not to place too much faith in experts — use your common sense in your efforts to bring down the establishment. Today, the Vietnam generation is the establishment, and employing experts is a key tactic to asserting authority and, in some case, to infantilizing the public.

Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician. He wrote this for the Chicago Tribune (TNS).