Covid-19 and the real problem with experts

The problem is not listening to experts. The problem is having experts who pay no price for their advice being wrong and therefore have no humility or modest.

In an interesting little piece in the Financial Times, John Thornhill talks about “re-emphasis[ing] the importance of experts, while accepting there is sometimes a spectrum of expert opinion”:

Societies have to base decisions on experts’ views in many fields, such as medicine and climate change, otherwise there is no point in having a debate. Dismissing the views of experts, as Michael Gove famously did during the Brexit referendum campaign, is to erode the foundations of a rational society. No sane passenger would board an aeroplane flown by an unqualified…