This piece originally appeared in The Timmerman Report. 

The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols, 2017, Oxford University Press.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re an expert or well on your way to becoming one. The Timmerman Report is tailored by content and intent to be valuable to those with the knowledge, experience and interest to make biopharma news worth reading. Experts, in other words.

This isn’t a trivial point: for the vast majority of people—that is, those non-expert in biopharma—news in sites like this one or STAT or Endpoints is as useful as scuba equipment to an octopus. And that’s fine; that’s how our knowledge-based society works. Individuals become experts in specific fields, they take the time and effort to master a specific area and they build up the intellectual framework to enable advances, discoveries and explanations. Specialization underlies the technological, societal and scientific wonders we take for granted today. There are just too many fields of study for any one person to master, the Maesters of a Song of Ice and Fire aside. Divide and conquer isn’t just for Roman governance philosophy; it also makes for progress.

The natural corollary is that we are all affected by what experts outside our field say and do. Lacking a working and academic knowledge of biopharma does not immunize a person from the impact of the kinds of issues, news, and discoveries discussed and reported here. Drug pricing, innovation, access and healthcare quality and affordability have huge impacts on everyone in the US.

And boy, do many of them have opinions about that! Opinions that they hold tighter and higher than the words of experts. Opinions that influence the ways in which they speak, act, think and yes, sometimes, vote.

This growing issue is at the heart of Tom Nichols’ book, The Death of Expertise. Nichols, a professor in National Security Affairs at the Naval War College and adjunct at the Harvard Extension School, is a former Senate aide and an expert in Soviet studies. I first became familiar with his work when, after last year’s US Presidential Election, I started consciously expanding the circle of thinkers I listened to. Like Daniel MacArthur and many others of a more liberal bent, I’ve tried to find and listen to people on the center and right.

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