Tom Nichols, “The Death Of Expertise“

From movie reviews to medical advice, it’s easier than ever to get information. But it’s harder, Nichols shows, to know what kind of information we’re getting; new media platforms, for instance, level the playing field, making it difficult to distinguish facts from opinions or speculations. Worse, such distinctions no longer seem to matter much. In his impassioned cautionary tale about the perils of un-vetted information, Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College whose previous books include Sacred Cause and No Use, argues that credentials are still important, and that giving experts their due is not undemocratic. Rather, to keep democracy working, he argues that leaders need experts to educate and advise them, that journalists must inform rather than entertain, and that voters have a duty to question and learn, not merely assert and argue. Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.’s premier in