Letter to the Editors - Episode 0194
The role of "expertise" and the case against vaccine mandates
Editor’s Note: This is an actual email exchange. The first we’ve published, so you’ll notice a couple of bracketed references in my response. This is meant to provide context for something that might not otherwise be apparent.
I apologize that the link to sociologist Stephen Turner’s article is behind an academic paywall. Can’t do anything about it.
A huge thank you to Glenn Adamson for taking the time to write the email, for agreeing to be a part of this new feature, and for listening to the podcast!
Lastly, I’ll add that although Glenn graciously asked that I have the last word, he had a very relevant response to my peanut analogy, pointing out that many airlines have banned the serving of peanuts on their flights.
As always, thanks very much for listening—and now reading!
Send your letters to editor@theamericanage.org
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Dear American Age,
After listening to Episode 194 (“The Expert in the Rye: What Makes or Breaks Credibility”) I was left somewhat perplexed with the line of thought that Travis was taking. I was left wondering what he thinks the role of experts should be in society (if any). It also seems to me that, in contradiction to the general line of his argument, we’re far from living in a period of ‘aristocracy of experts’ - given that the public respect for expertise seems very low (as compared with the 1950s for example) in most cultural arenas - politics, medicine, law, academia, etc. In all these sectors, high levels of public trust have been replaced by widespread skepticism, so that seems to be a trend in the opposite direction to what he’s seeing.
I also had a question about his position on Covid, which seems not to take into account that remaining unvaccinated is inherently putting others (including strangers, of an unpredictable number) at risk of illness and death. This seems to make it quite different to other individual choices one might take, which or identities (such as being Jewish or African American).
Thanks for taking these questions and as always let me express huge appreciation for the work you are all doing together!
Glenn Adamson
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Hi, Glenn—
I very much appreciate your thoughtful objections to the strident rhetoric I’ve adopted of late, which is what must have led to the impression I am skeptical of “expertise” per se. It’s something I’m consciously working on. Not to be overly dramatic, but I do feel a little bit like an unelected Cassandra. It’s the first time I’ve felt this way in my adult life, so managing it is a challenge.
Liberal progressive discourse is becoming increasingly authoritarian and heartless (a mirror of what I despised about the Trump years) and I don’t know where to put that frustration, so it comes out in the podcast—and at home—and at work—and on Twitter. With that little confessional out of the way, let me address your two very reasonable objections.
Expertise: Yes, I very much believe in expertise and the importance of expertise in the proper governance of an advanced liberal democracy, which is why its subversion disturbs me. For example, it is a misrepresentation boarding on media propaganda that there is expert consensus on any of the progressive pandemic shibboleths: lock-downs, masking, universal vaccination campaigns, seasonality, long COVID, herd immunity, etc.
In reality the support for these policies is a form of elitism, if we understand elitism to be the intertwined obverse of the populism given form by the Trump presidency. The policies encoded as “expert opinion" are not the consensus of experts. They are the rhetoric and the fever, the habitus, of this elite group. (Please note “elite” does not have to mean economic elite. I’m following the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu here. Money is almost incidental to it).
Expert opinions that conform to this habitus are held up in mainstream media outlets and those that are not are ignored, qualified into obscurity, and sometimes gleefully ostracized. What has happened is that “expertise” has become a cipher for the currently acceptable establishment opinion at any given time. It’s little more than in-group signal.
I appreciate that the article you sent [Turner, Stephen. “What is the Problem with Experts?”] opposed Habermas and Foucault with [Robert] Merton. Merton’s hopeful constructivism is an ideal to strive for. I’d happily accept any evidence that the media or our federal institutions are committed to anything remotely resembling Mertonian norms.
At the end of the day I do believe in the basic goodness and wisdom of the majority of people, and so I believe in democracy. Transparency and accountability are indispensable to mobilizing this basic goodness. Right now there is no transparency (censorship is on the rise), and there is no accountability (the media refuses to challenge the federal bureaucracy on any of its pronouncements).
Vaccines: This one is harder. To give an adequate response would require me to marshal an army of analyses and provisional facts that wouldn’t fit into this already too long email. It’d be easier for me to say plainly what I think about vaccines and mandates based on the research I’ve read. I should note (probably defensively) that while my training is not as a scientist, I spent the better part of 2020 with enough textbooks, primers, and online resources that I can pick my way (very slowly) through a scientific article on this topic that isn’t too specialized. I’m no expert, but I don’t have to listen to what other people say the research shows. I can look for myself.
This is what I think about vaccine mandates: COVID is not dangerous enough to the average person to warrant this large scale expansion of the federal or state bureaucracies. If we are willing to mandate “leaky” (i.e. non-sterilizing) vaccines for a disease that kills 2 in 10,000 people* what pretext do you think the next administration you don’t like will use to exercise these powers? I am sorry for the immunocompromised the way I am sorry for people who have severe nut allergies, but I don’t think that means we should ban people from eating peanuts in public. I want to protect the elderly because life is precious, but life is precious precisely because it is delirious to be alive and not because it is properly monitored by the authorities.
Limiting our discussion to “safety” alone will open the door to countless tyrannies in the future. Do you seriously think some future Trump will hesitate to use this precedent for bureaucratic intrusion to keep his or her power, or lock power away from “others”?
It is generally considered that the two indispensable ingredients for a true democracy (from Plato to Rawls) are liberty and equality. And I believe that. The rhetoric of “safety” is often used by authoritarians to curtail one or the other of those necessary ingredients (see the history of American apartheid). I do not trust at all that this new bureaucracy won’t be used in the future to take more from us than we currently imagine is possible.
Happy to give you the last word and read any response you might like to offer, and also happy to send this out into the void. I sincerely appreciate that you listened closely enough to the podcast to object to my position. If I haven’t convinced you, I hope at least it’s obvious my position is not reactionary or unprincipled.
Best,
Travis
*10.24.2021 - Since I wrote this email to Glenn I have looked high and low for some support for this statistic. I thought it looked high to me when I re-read my email the next day, but I was a little too sure of myself to double check before publishing. That was a mistake. I spent today looking through data online, and chicken scratching through some basic arithmetic, but no go. So I need to correct this.
It should be 2 (or 3) in 1,000, not 2 in 10,000. It’s closer to my original number for people under 50 who are without comorbidities, but that’s not what I said the first time so it’s wrong. This doesn’t change my position. I’m all for vaccination in most populations. And very much against vaccine mandates for this particular disease. I apologize. I’ll be more careful next time.