Along with “Follow the science!” a common demand today is “Listen to the experts!” Of course, one doesn’t actually follow “science” but scientists, who ostensibly are experts to whom one should listen.
In reality, though, the above demands are only issued when the “science” and “experts” happen to agree with the powers-that-be. Yet, for the last few years especially, many “experts” haven’t displayed much expertise.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson made this point Thursday evening. After stating that the establishment wants us to not worry our pretty little heads over problems and just rely on the experts, he noted that “Covid kind of blew that up.” He continued:
If there’s one thing we learned from that disaster, it’s that public policy experts very often had no clue what they were talking about. Your hippie aunt in Mendocino County knew a lot more about how to beat a flu virus than your average virologist on CNN. They’re not going to tell you to go outside, get some exercise, some sunlight, some fresh air, stop eating junk food, turn off your computer once in a while, spend time with other people. Be healthy. That advice worked. The experts, by contrast, made you get the vaccine, and that did not work.
Carlson then said that most Americans have figured this out. Yet while on the one hand this has led to more cynicism (not good; cynicism isn’t skepticism), on the other, many people still trust the experts on climate change.
The commentator proceeded to present a number of climate alarmists’ wild predictions. For example, “In 1972, Brown University’s science department sent a letter to the White House explaining that they had ‘deep concern with the future of the world because this ice age falls within the rank of processes which produced the last Ice Age,’” stated Carlson. “Two years later, in 1974, The Guardian reported, ‘Spy satellites show new ice age is coming fast,’ and the report cited for moral weight [an] analysis carried out at Columbia University.”
“But by the early 1980s, when the ice didn’t arrive, well, the experts decided the problem wasn’t too much cold,” Carlson later added. “It was global warming.”
Carlson also mentioned that in 1989 a climate “expert” predicted that in 20 years Manhattan’s West Side Highway would be under water (it’s not). The host presented many other examples, too, which you can hear in the video at this article’s conclusion.
Carlson is far from the first, though, to illustrate doomsayer “expert” absurdity. For instance, “In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and … that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989,” related Professor Walter E. Williams in 2008, and that “by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.”
Now 90, Ehrlich is no wiser, mind you — but the media still cite him as a credible “expert.”
Grasping the “Listen to the experts” line’s folly is easy. Consider: How many Supreme Court decisions are 5-4? Many. So while the justices all are (ostensibly) judicial experts, they often draw contrary conclusions on the same case.
So it ever is, too: On a multitude of issues, and all or virtually all controversial ones, there’ll be experts on both or all sides. So we can’t just “listen” to the “approved” ones obediently — nor should we cynically dismiss them all.
We must exercise discernment.
In other words, without wisdom, we’re lost.
Make no mistake, either, there always are spot-on experts. Carlson mentioned that to counteract growing distrust of the establishment Covid narrative, the left-wing Atlantic magazine published an early 2021 article titled “Following Your Gut Isn’t the Right Way to Go.” But there’s a delicious irony here.
In February 2020 — early in the “pandemic” — The Atlantic ran an article by a doctor citing experts stating that most everyone would eventually contract Covid, vaccines wouldn’t help us, and that “‘cold and flu season’ could become ‘cold and flu and COVID-19 season.’” That’s precisely how it turned out, too.
The lesson: The truly expert experts are there, even in the liberal media occasionally. But finding and recognizing them requires diligence and wisdom.
Experts vs. Government “Experts”
“I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.” So said Dr. Knut Wittkowski, former longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, when explaining in early 2020 why Dr. Anthony Fauci was recommending Covid lockdowns, which Wittkowski knew to be destructive.
“Faucism” is what happens, too, when political self-interest enters the equation. Remember the “New Coke” boondoggle in 1985? It took the company 79 days to correct its error and reinstate Coca-Cola Classic. If it had been the government, two years later we’d still have been told New Coke tasted better, we should drink it, and that anyone disagreeing is stuck in the past (and, hopefully, we wouldn’t have heard that dissenters are bad Americans and that we should inject New Coke intravenously).
The lesson: Political self-interest generally leads to worse outcomes than economic self-interest. To retain market share, Coke or any company must win people’s “votes” (their purchases) every week, or even each day. Politicians only have to con people into voting for them every two to six years.
Worse still, perhaps, is bureaucratic self-interest. The world’s Faucis don’t have to win votes at all, but retain their power and position by ingratiating themselves to the political class. Of course, we also shouldn’t forget the media’s role: When they censor true experts while exalting current-day Trofim Lysenkos, incompetence and stupidity reign.
The even deeper issue, however, is that long ago we began prioritizing experts over the only people who can tell us who really is expert: wise men.
For those interested, the aforementioned Tucker Carlson segment is below.
