The Death of Expertise

Author: Tom Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469439
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

The Death of Expertise

Author: Thomas M. Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469412
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement to attacks on GMOs. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, there are a number of reasons why this has occurred-ranging from easy access to Internet search engines to a customer satisfaction model within higher education.

The Crisis of Expertise

Author: Gil Eyal
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509538860
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

Beyond Expertise

Author: Alan Berrey
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1632994224
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Subject matter experts are the most valuable members of any organization—period. They establish vision, forge paths, create products, solve problems, sell customers, define policies, and cure ailments. Companies cannot prosper without them, since unlike non-experts, they provide the scaffolding upon which all other functions of the organization depend. They hold the jewels of knowledge in their organizations and are typically the top performers in their fields. But few company leaders ensure their experts are thoroughly developed as experts and often leave their effectiveness to chance. Alan Berrey addresses the challenges that confront experts and explores the techniques of top performers, including how they apply their expertise and maximize their power. Have you ever wondered how people judge your expertise and why it matters in your career? Beyond Expertise is about the craft of the expert—the artful application of expertise. It is about bringing your expertise out of the dark and maximizing your impact. It is about honing your influence with clients and boosting your authority with colleagues. In short, it is about becoming a compelling agent of change in any environment and with any audience. Alan Berrey is the founder of Expert Dig, Inc., a research and training venture committed to the advancement of corporate experts. With decades-long experience as a subject matter expert, he was CEO of multiple start-ups and vice president of business development at multiple technology companies. He has served clients in high-tech, manufacturing, financial services, telecommunications, transportation, health care, and government.

The Death of Truth

Author: Michiko Kakutani
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525574832
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic comes an impassioned critique of America’s retreat from reason We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases. How did truth become an endangered species in contemporary America? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and politics, Kakutani identifies the trends—originating on both the right and the left—that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant. With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and points toward a new path for our truth-challenged times.

Exploring Expertise

Author: James Fleck
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 134913693X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
The growing social and economic significance of expertise is reflected in popular suggestions that we are moving into a post-industrial 'knowledge society'. The subject of expertise is becoming recognised in a range of scholarly disciplines ranging from science and technology, psychology, computing and artificial intelligence through to management and organisational behaviour. Exploring Expertise brings together some of these diverse understandings of the character and implications of expertise, and demonstrates through a set of empirical case studies how expertise means different things to different groups, how it is constructed differently in different settings, and the consequences of this process for relations between 'members' of the knowledge society and those 'on the outside'. The book includes case study material ranging from a hospital ward to a factory to a nuclear weapons facility.

No Use

Author: Thomas M. Nichols
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812245660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
For more than forty years, the United States has maintained a public commitment to nuclear disarmament, and every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has gradually reduced the size of America's nuclear forces. Yet even now, over two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States maintains a huge nuclear arsenal on high alert and ready for war. The Americans, like the Russians, the Chinese, and other major nuclear powers, continue to retain a deep faith in the political and military value of nuclear force, and this belief remains enshrined at the center of U.S. defense policy regardless of the radical changes that have taken place in international politics. In No Use, national security scholar Thomas M. Nichols offers a lucid, accessible reexamination of the role of nuclear weapons and their prominence in U.S. security strategy. Nichols explains why strategies built for the Cold War have survived into the twenty-first century, and he illustrates how America's nearly unshakable belief in the utility of nuclear arms has hindered U.S. and international attempts to slow the nuclear programs of volatile regimes in North Korea and Iran. From a solid historical foundation, Nichols makes the compelling argument that to end the danger of worldwide nuclear holocaust, the United States must take the lead in abandoning unrealistic threats of nuclear force and then create a new and more stable approach to deterrence for the twenty-first century.

The Areas of My Expertise

Author: John Hodgman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101653612
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although bestsellers such as Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true. Here is a different kind of handy desk reference, one in which all of the historical oddities and amazing true facts are sifted through the singular, illuminating imagination of John Hodgman—which is the nice way of saying: He made it all up. John Hodgman brings his considerable expertise to bear in answering all of the questions book buyers have been asking: -What are the mottoes of the 51 United States? THE ANSWER IS PROVIDED -Who were the U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands? THE ANSWER IS PROVIDED -What role does the Yale secret society “Skull and Bones” play in the secret world government? THERE IS NO SECRET WORLD GOVERNMENT -What was the menu at the first Thanksgiving, and did it include eels? Technically, that is two questions, but do not apologize, for John Hodgman shall answer them both . . . LATER. -Aside from a compendium of fake trivia, what is the best kind of book to write? A SIMPLE TABLE OF THE 55 MOST DRAMATIC LITERARY SITUATIONS PROVIDES THE ANSWER, and John Hodgman is the author of that table. Imagine if The Book of Lists had been rewritten by Peter Cook and Jorge Luis Borges under the pseudonym of “John Hodgman” and then renamed The Areas of My Expertise, and you will only begin to have a sense of the dizzying, uproarious, sublimely weird, and strangely wise journey that is contained within this book (along with all the pages and words). Perfect for anyone who thirsts for knowledge, and especially for collectors of books of fake trivia, The Areas of My Expertise offers through absurdity a better understanding of the world we share—and recognizes that while the truth may be stranger than fiction, it is never as strange as lies . . . or as true. Look out for John Hodgman's latest book, Vacationland, available from Viking in Fall 2017.

Medicolegal Death Investigation System

Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309167043
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Book Description
The US Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of The National Academies to conduct a workshop that would examine the interface of the medicolegal death investigation system and the criminal justice system. NIJ was particularly interested in a workshop in which speakers would highlight not only the status and needs of the medicolegal death investigation system as currently administered by medical examiners and coroners but also its potential to meet emerging issues facing contemporary society in America. Additionally, the workshop was to highlight priority areas for a potential IOM study on this topic. To achieve those goals, IOM constituted the Committee for the Workshop on the Medicolegal Death Investigation System, which developed a workshop that focused on the role of the medical examiner and coroner death investigation system and its promise for improving both the criminal justice system and the public health and health care systems, and their ability to respond to terrorist threats and events. Six panels were formed to highlight different aspects of the medicolegal death investigation system, including ways to improve it and expand it beyond its traditional response and meet growing demands and challenges. This report summarizes the Workshop presentations and discussions that followed them.

The Death of Common Sense

Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812982746
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “We need a new idea of how to govern. The current system is broken. Law is supposed to be a framework for humans to make choices, not the replacement for free choice.” So notes Philip K. Howard in the new Afterword to his explosive manifesto The Death of Common Sense. Here Howard offers nothing less than a fresh, lucid, practical operating system for modern democracy. America is drowning—in law, lawsuits, and nearly endless red tape. Before acting or making a decision, we often abandon our best instincts. We pause, we worry, we equivocate, and then we divert our energy into trying to protect ourselves. Filled with one too many examples of bureaucratic overreach, The Death of Common Sense demonstrates how we—and our country—can at last get back on track.