Status Distrust of Scientific Experts

ABSTRACT

Distrust in scientific experts can be surprisingly stubborn, persisting despite evidence supporting the experts’ views, demonstrations of their competence, or displays of good will. This stubborn distrust is often viewed as a manifestation of irrationality. By contrast, this article proposes a logic of “status distrust”: low-status individuals are objectively vulnerable to collective decision-making, and can justifiably distrust high-status scientific experts if they are not confident that the experts do not have their best interests at heart. In phenomena of status distrust, social status is thus an indicator of distrust, and this has wider implications for the literatures on trust in science and on expert communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Expertise
• trust
• social status
• distrust in science
• science denial

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this article I am largely passing over the question: what properties qualify someone as a genuine “scientific expert”? (See for instance: Goldman 2001; Anderson 2011; Brennan 2020.) In this article I will be emphasizing the social and political processes underlying such ascriptions. This is more in keeping with “social role accounts” of expertise (see Watson 2020, ch. 6), but I will not take any stand on this debate. For a discussion of the closely related question of what properties qualify someone as a “professional”, see also Desmond (2020). For purposes here, I have in mind a relatively matter-of-fact understanding of a “scientific expert” as someone who (1) has the relevant educational credentials, (2) is a professional scientist, i.e. conducts scientific research in a particular area according to relevant standards of competence, and (3) is asked to inform the public or to advise policy-makers concerning phenomena they are presumed to be knowledgeable about.

2. In fact, higher levels of education predict a lower susceptibility to conspiracy theories (Prooijen 2017; De Coninck et al. 2021).

3. In the words of Freidson: ‘The professional ideology of service goes beyond serving others’ choices. Rather, it claims devotion to a transcendent value which infuses its specialization with a larger and putatively higher goal which may reach beyond that of those they are supposed to serve. (…) Such values as Justice, Salvation, Beauty, Truth, Health, and Prosperity … ” (Freidson 2001, 120).

4. Larson (1977) is the locus classicus in the sociology of the professions, but it draws on a long tradition going back to Foucault, Gramsci, or Marx, where service ideals and (bourgeois) professional organizations are analyzed as expressions of power structures.

5. Though Abbott does not use the term, the interaction between rival professions is essentially – or at least strongly reminiscent of – a Darwinian dynamic (cf. Boyd and Richerson 1985).

6. Balzac’s actual remark is more nuanced in context as it concerns only great fortunes “without an apparent cause”. Nonetheless, the popular generalization of his remark to all fortunes is indicative of a common attitude towards wealth. The full quote: Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait. (Balzac 1856, 136).

7. This is how Hobbes, for instance, defines “power” in the Leviathan (Hobbes [1651] 1996, chapter 10).

8. Introduced by (Lee 2021), further developed in (Desmond 2021b), and developed yet further here.

9. This premise reflects: (1) the definition of social status as being able to give greater weight to one’s own preferences in collective decision-making, (2) empirical evidence that high-status individuals are trusted more –(Glaeser et al. 1999; Lount and Pettit 2012). The premise also assumes that status distrusters are not widespread (populists; conspiracy theorists). If status distrusters are widespread, then the usual indicators for high status (education; wealth; etc.) can become indicators for low status. (For instance, during communist revolutions of the past, education, wealth, etc. became markers for low status.).

10. This is, strictly speaking, “prestige distrust”. However, speaking of “status distrust” is appropriate insofar as dominant, non-prestigious individuals are to be distrusted (since they coercively or violently act to further their own narrow interests); “dominance distrust” is ubiquitous.

11. See Desmond (2021c) for an in-depth analysis of how this dynamic of trust works.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hugh Desmond

Hugh Desmond is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy at Leibniz Universität Hannover and assistant professor at the University of Antwerp. He earned his PhD in philosophy of biology at KU Leuven with visiting fellowships at Princeton University and New York University. After his PhD, he held fellowships in bioethics and applied ethics at the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Law (KU Leuven) and The Hastings Center, and in philosophy of science at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (CNRS/Paris I-Sorbonne). His work focuses on the logic and normative implications of evolutionary theory, with special attention for the concepts of progress, human nature, and agency. He has also published broadly on the social and methodological dimensions of science: competition, trust, professionalism, and integrity.