Who are ‘experts’, anyway?

In the latest post in a series on experts, Reiner Grundmann argues that even in the world of Brexit and President Trump expertise is alive and well. However, we must pay close attention to how it is used in politics.

Over the past months senior politicians in the UK have called into question the role of experts in politics. Much of this view is linked to the Brexit debate and Michael Gove's comment that 'people in this country have had enough of experts'. He was responding to alarming predictions from economic experts, including the governor of the bank of England, the IMF, the treasury, and the OECD. Pundits in the elite press, from the Economist to the Financial Times gave the same message. The meaning of the term 'expert' in this context was linked to an institutionally and professionally established role. Economists by and large agree that open societies are better for wealth creation (and indirectly for the public good) than closed societies.

These experts were seen as peddling fear and exaggerating the negative impacts of a Leave vote. Gove's punchline was directed at a special group of economic advisors who may have overstepped the mark of credible advice. As no one can foretell the future, the retort went, these experts have wrongly tried to impose themselves on the public's sense about the right course of action.