This is a book that, by its title, invites approval from professionals in public arenas and by educated individuals. It is becoming clear to subject matter experts that public policy discussions often degenerate into exchanges of opinions by the masses with little weight given to the opinions of genuine experts. This may be the book that we have awaited; it is at times, however, disappointing in its delivery. The result is less of an analysis than an extended statement of informed opinion. Comforting as such texts may be in reassuring policy professionals that the problem is real, they lack utility when they fail to highlight the underlying causes that must be addressed if the problem is to be solved. The book grew out of an article of the same name that Mr. Nichols had published in The Federalist. A journal article may be expected to limit its analysis to a clear statement of the problem; a book, however, deserves a deeper analysis.
The opening states the basic problem: that there is a distinction to be made between citizens and subject experts and citizens are becoming comfortable with disposing of the experts. If experts are not needed, then each person may seek information on their own. Unfortunately, we prefer hearing information if it matches our current biases. Such confirmation bias provides an easy basis for sorting through the myriad hits that any internet search can yield. And, those hits will include rumors and old-wives' tales as well as "junk" research. When our discussions take a political aspect, such as questions of foreign affairs or economics, citizen's refusal to accept an authority whose well-founded views conflict with the unschooled views of the individual, the latter will hold final sway. If no appeal to authority can be made, much of our conversation becomes a tedious re-hash of positions with no defensible justification. This is tedious. At their worst, our exchanges become nasty ad hominem rages at each other.
The author enters into the well-worn topic of the inadequacy of public education, particularly at the university. The allegation, sadly, is not new and it is a waste of time to simply re-plow the same furrows. In Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), the last chapter cites studies and reports from the 1890s and the 1920s and later that report American students incapable of finding the Pacific Ocean on a map or similar instances of ignorance. It would be more useful to inquire why universities and colleges (if there are any institutions that cling to that less grand title) have changed their focus. Why has the change taken place? An analysis, for example, that argued how the continuing cuts in aid to state schools has made them far more dependent upon tuition and that requires attracting and keeping students. Small private colleges might need to follow suit since they are competing for the same market. (It may also be that the absence of a draft has removed the incentive for students to please their schools.) The issue of grade inflation, if it is a real phenomenon, at elite schools poses a different problem. With the stagnation of most incomes and the widening distribution of wealth or incomes, a degree from an elite school may have significant market value. Why then, does Harvard or Yale need to create satisfied customers? Why has the gentleman's C been replaced by the gentleman's A-? Here the text is silent; it only notes the problem.
Two topics that the author enters into are noteworthy. He points out that the metrics often used to assess expert opinion are the wrong ones. Comparison of expert predictions against purely mechanical systems (throwing darts) or mass voting are the wrong measure. Experts may be wrong, but the reasoning underlying their opinions is more valuable than random methods. In short, being wrong may not be the real test. The author proposes, instead, to keep track records of expert opinions and to include assessments of their work evaluated by other experts.
The book needed a better editor than the author got from his publisher. A serious reader would have noted shifts in argument with a half-dozen pages or an overall lack of an argument. The author at one point argues the phrase familiar to on-line comments that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. Three pages later, the author uses democracy as it is generally used to describe our polity. The text sometimes hints that a good outline might have tightened the presentation.
For summarizing the problem at its first level, the book may be recommended, if not warmly.
For providing a sharper analysis of how we got there, the book fails.
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