Gove was right

There are two problems with experts; they either talk about the things they know, or the things they don't. 

Michael Gove's statement that 'people in this country are tired of experts' entered the historical and political lexicon as a Brexit soundbite, and was supposedly symptomatic of an era characterised by populist, post-truth, and anti-intelligence movements. I have concerns about this interpretation. When I realised that the phrase was being mockingly employed by middle-class liberals over dinner party discussions, with a derisory tone to the word 'people' suggesting it may as well be interchangeable with 'proletariat', I felt uneasy.

Firstly, what did Gove actually say? This is the least important part of this discussion, but worth dealing with upfront. In an interview with Faisal Islam on Sky News on 3rd June 2016 he said 'I think the people in this country have had enough of experts ... [interruption] ... from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong'. The second part of the quote is less well-known but is a relevant qualification, especially in the context of the debate. There are many problems with our current political discourse, but the habit of extracting talking points from fragments of sentences is surely not a helpful strategy.

Secondly, what did Gove actually mean? Again, taken in the context of the debate, he was clearly referring to a specific issue of economic projections, rather than more broadly attacking the notion of expertise. In a latter interview Gove clarified this point. 

Thirdly, was Gove right? In the specific sense, I don't know, and I am not sure that anyone does. It is a testable hypothesis, but I am not aware of any public opinion survey at the time which asked a question such as 'are you sick of experts such as the IMF and OECD giving predictions about the economic impact of Brexit?'.To my knowledge Gove has not clarified which 'people' he was referring to, and it is likely he was simply reflecting his own views and those of people around him. Whether you believe that Gove is the sort of person who has a good handle on the pulse of the nation is irrelevant. One cannot dispute that he has been returned as MP for his constituency for nearly two decades, so even if the Tory voters of Surrey Heath are not your sort of people, clearly there are at least some people whose opinions he does represent. As an aside, lest we think that mistrust of experts is a feature of the political right we should remember that it was Clement Attlee who said that 'often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs'. 

So was Gove right in a broader sense? Survey data is of poor quality in this area - the linked article includes the honest appraisal 'Public attitudes to experts: What do we know? Not much'. 

My feeling is that most people are not 'sick of experts'; rather many are understandably frustrated by what they see as the conflicting opinions of experts. One set of well-credentialed experts advocates lockdown. Another set advocates relaxing restrictions. What is the average person to think? Light might be shed on the matter by critical appraisal of the source data, analysis methods, caveats of modelling, and so on, but is this realistically achievable for the average person, constrained by education, time, and resources? If experts cannot be trusted to ordain the truth of these things then what are they for? 

The path of least resistance is instead to to fall into fallacy and assume that either 

1. only one expert is right; usually the one whose opinion allies with the individual's own beliefs (zero-sum and confirmation biases combined).

2. both sets of experts are wrong; the correct answer must lie between the two experts, or be a third (possibly non-expert) solution. This last space contains valid ideas but is also easily exploited.

Most people also have a healthy and intuitive dislike for oversimplification. This is especially true when the oversimplification is delivered by a group perceived as elite and/or distant.

.. thoughts on solutions to follow