Sachin Jain: What are your thoughts on how we came to devalue expertise as a society?
Sachin Jain shared on LinkedIn:
“A close friend has gotten into my ear about the end of expertise.
In a society in which people routinely spend decades studying a topic, we often equally value the opinions and perspectives of lay people. How did we get here?
A few thoughts:
1) Perceived or real conflicts of interest. We believe people with deep expertise have something to gain from a particular perspective so we mistrust them.
2) Democratization of information. While some people may be “true” experts; the broad availability of information takes these experts off their pedestals because everything they learn is ready available to others.
3) Failures of expertise. We have a history of excessively deferring to experts in key situations to our own detriment and so we have written them off more broadly.
I used to say—In Boston (a temple of academia), an expert on a topic is someone who has written 400 papers on a topic.
In Washington (the center of government and policy, where I spent a few early years of my career), an expert is someone who attended a meeting on a topic.
What are your thoughts on how we came to devalue expertise as a society?”
Source: Sachin Jain/LinkedIn
Sachin Jain is the President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. He also serves as a Board Member at The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, an Academic Hospitalist (WOC) at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and a Board Member at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
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