Michael Gove. Wellington College/Flickr. Some rights reserved.The question of experts in public political debates was vaguely suggested although not explicitly addressed by Michael Gove when he made his provocative and ambiguous claim, in the throes of the recent EU referendum, that: ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’. Implicitly too, fashionable terms and notions that are applied to current political views and assertions such as ‘fake news’; ‘post-truth society’; ‘populist politics’; ‘Trumpism’; ‘anti-elitism’ and ‘anti-intellectualism’ lead one to ask whether and when we should trust supposed expert commentators.
Experts are experts only within their particular spheres of expertise, when they speak outside that sphere, what they say should not be confused with expert comment and advice.
Many of the claims made by experts with regard to political decisions, events and public policies are not trustworthy. In particular, we should be wary of supposed experts when they make ‘prophecies’ rather than predictions and when they express ‘value judgements’ rather than statements of fact.
