Expert Trust and Trustworthiness: The Gap between Experts and the Public

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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Modern societies depend on experts. We need scientists, engineers, doctors, economists, intelligence analysts, election administrators, public health officials, and many others to help us understand problems that are too complex for most citizens to evaluate on their own. In many conflicts, however, the problem is not simply that experts disagree. The deeper problem is that large portions of the public no longer trust experts to be honest, fair, independent, or attentive to ordinary people's concerns. This creates a serious conflict overlay problem: even when good information exists, people may reject it because they distrust the people and institutions presenting it.

Some public distrust of experts is rooted in confusion about how science works. Scientific and technical knowledge often changes as new evidence becomes available. Experts may revise their recommendations, disagree about uncertain questions, or use cautious language that sounds evasive to the public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, changing guidance about masks, vaccines, school closures, and risk levels led many people to conclude that public health experts were unreliable or politically motivated. Research on public health communication emphasizes that trust is damaged when officials fail to explain uncertainty clearly, as discussed in this article on risk communication during COVID-19. Similarly, the National Academies notes that omitting information about uncertainty can increase distrust.

Distrust is also fueled by real cases in which expert institutions have failed, been captured by powerful interests, or ignored the lived experience of affected communities. The opioid crisis is one example. An article in the AMA Journal of Ethics argues that regulatory mistakes and deceptive pharmaceutical promotion contributed to the overprescribing of opioids and the resulting public health disaster. The Flint water crisis offers another example. Residents who complained about unsafe water were initially discounted by officials, and later analyses described a profound loss of trust caused by failures of government agencies and technical authorities, as discussed in this study of citizen science during the Flint water emergency. Such cases teach people that "trust the experts" can be dangerous when experts are insulated from accountability or too closely tied to political or economic power.

Partisan polarization further widens the gap between experts and the public. Pew Research Center finds that most Americans still express confidence in scientists, but that confidence remains below pre-pandemic levels and varies significantly by party, especially when scientists are seen as influencing policy. KFF polling on trust in the CDC and vaccine information shows how public confidence in expert agencies can become entangled with partisan identity and national politics. This does not mean that expertise is unimportant or that every citizen's opinion is as well-grounded as a specialist's judgment. It does mean that experts lose trust when they appear to move too quickly from "this is what the evidence shows" to "therefore this is what society must do," without acknowledging the value judgments, tradeoffs, and political choices involved.

Experts can become more trustworthy by recognizing that trust is earned through conduct, not demanded through credentials. They need to explain their processes and findings in language the public can understand without seeming as if they are "talking down" to the audience. They must be clear about what is known, what is uncertain, who funded the work, what assumptions were made, and where reasonable disagreement remains. They should distinguish factual claims from policy recommendations, admit mistakes promptly, avoid exaggerating certainty, and engage respectfully with the people most affected by their conclusions. The National Academies' report on understanding and addressing misinformation about science emphasizes the importance of systems-level responses that make reliable information more accessible and credible. In conflict settings, processes such as joint fact-finding can also help by involving stakeholders in the questions, evidence, and interpretation. Expertise remains essential, but in deeply divided conflicts, experts must demonstrate not only competence, but also humility, independence, transparency, and respect.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.