The Assault on Expertise

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Elan Journo sit down to discuss the general skepticism around the role of scientific expertise, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Topics discussed include:

The fallacy of appealing to irrelevant authority
The necessity of appealing to reliable experts when one does not have specialized knowledge of one’s own
Methods of independently evaluating the reliability of experts
The good and bad reasons people have for distrusting experts and being skeptical about certain scientific fields

Some of the resources mentioned in this podcast are lesson 2 of Introduction to Logic by Leonard Peikoff, Objective Thinking by Gregory Salmieri and Ben Bayer, Elan Journo’s article “Googling It Does Not Make You an Expert” as well as Ben Bayer’s “The Guidance We Need to Follow the Coronavirus Science” and “The Dangerous Thinking Behind Pandemic Partisanship.”

This podcast was recorded on August 26, 2020. Watch or listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.