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Sachin Jain: What are your thoughts on how we came to devalue expertise as a society?

Photo from Sachin H. Jain/Linkedin

Jun 26, 2024, 11:45

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).