I’ve recently been reminded of Tom Nichols’ 2017 book, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, which I very much wanted to like and be able to recommend. I bought it when it was published, read it, and gave it three stars at Goodreads with this very brief review: “Marred by the author stepping out of his area of expertise and making causal and explanatory claims without proper data or argument on journalism, education, and philosophy of science.”

This led to another Goodreads user stating a couple of years later (in 2019): “So your review comment is, by your own words is invalid as you have stepped outside of your area of expertise.”

To which I responded: “Have I, though? What expertise do you think is required to make the judgment I made, and what evidence do you have that I lack it?”

He then accused me of a double standard, stating that “Now you ask for evidence of my statement regarding your expertise. Yet you judged the author as I judged you and you did not feel it was necessary for you to substantiate your judgment of him.”

This prompted me to explain how I was not using such a double standard and give a fuller elaboration of my complaints with the book, as follows:

I knew Prof. Nichols' areas of expertise when I wrote my comment, but I don't think you knew my areas of expertise when you wrote yours, so that was my objection to your comment. It would have made more sense for you to ask me to elaborate on my comment--to *ask* me to substantiate my judgment, which you failed to do--than to make the unfounded (and, as it happens, wrong) claim you did--I have an advanced degree in philosophy; epistemology and philosophy of science were areas of specialization and interest.

Prof. Nichols has expertise in international affairs, political science, national security, and related fields. He is not a climate scientist, yet in his brief commentary on climate science (p. 224) he states that “experts cannot answer … what to do about climate change” – this is misleading, since they can report on the likely consequences of various actions or inactions (both mitigation and adaptation), as well as estimate economic costs. While it’s up to policymakers to make the decisions, experts can tell you what the tradeoffs are. He is not a philosopher of science, yet he makes claims such as (p. 178) that it is “a basic rule of science” that science focuses on explanation rather than prediction – historians and philosophers of science recognize no such rule, and there are numerous counterexamples (e.g., look at the history of positional astronomy). In the section on education, I recall Nichols making a number of causal/explanatory claims, but without reference to and supporting citations or evidence, and again, social science studies of education are not his field of expertise.

A few other issues: On pp. 160, Nichols says that Facebook “uses news curators to decide what shows up in a reader’s Facebook news feed”; this has actually never been the case, the curators he cites on p. 161 were responsible only for the “trending news” feature, not users’ news feeds. On p. 236, he states that “the antivaccination wave seems to have crested for now” and offers a proposed causal claim for why without any evidence cited or supportive argument. (Nichols has argued online that he thinks antivax views are more closely aligned with left-wing views than right-wing views, while those who have studied the issue disagree, and recent political activity, e.g., regarding Oregon’s attempt to tighten mandatory vaccination for public school students, was opposed primarily by Republicans).

I read Prof. Nichols book wanting to like it, and I did like many parts of it. It’s certainly not a bad book, and I gave it three stars which is a “good” rating. I just thought it marred by some examples like the above, which are outside his areas of expertise.

Looking back at this 2019 elaboration, I think the news feed vs. trending news criticism is perhaps somewhat uncharitable about Nichols’ lack of precision and accuracy in his criticism. Facebook introduced (in September 2006) what is now known (since 2022) as “Feed” by calling it “News Feed”; the curated “Trending News” feature, which he probably meant to refer to, lasted only from 2014-2018 before being removed due to low usage and controversy. On the other hand, it has become quite evident that antivax (along with anti-science and anti-expertise) is now strongly associated with Republicans and been empowered as it never has been before the Trump administration.

For what it’s worth, Tom Nichols wrote a USA Today op-ed in February 2018 titled “I’m still a Republican, but my party needs to be fumigated”, and announced his departure from the Republican Party in October 2018 in “Why I’m Leaving the Republican Party” in The Atlantic, where he writes frequently. It’s a publication which regularly publishes abysmally bad articles on medicine and public health promoting (or at least giving undue credence to) RFK Jr.’s “MAHA” agenda.