In the future, historians will look back at the phrase "We've had enough of experts" and see it as the tipping point.¹
They will stand there, bewildered, wondering how we could have been so stupid, so blind, so unrelentingly pig-headed.
My Facebook feed is adamant about tapping me on the shoulder and showing me the ongoing spat between a liberal Scotsman and his conservative countryman.
Tit for tat.
I got involved once. Brian contested the age of the Earth. "There is no evidence that it's any more than six thousand years old," he said.
I added my tuppenceworth:
At Causewayhead, the Wallace Monument sits proudly atop Abbey Craig. The hill is the site of William Wallace's HQ ahead of the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. A prehistoric sea loch once covered this outcrop. Archaeologists have found much evidence, including preserved shells and even whale bones.
It's hard to imagine, given its 300 ft high and twenty-five miles from the sea.
How did a whale get there? The obvious but mind-blowing answer is that the hill began its life beneath the sea and rose skyward. This doesn't happen overnight. Rivers deposit mud that accumulates at the bottom of lakes, and these layers are visible in the rocks.
It's a slow process —not a weekend DIY project. In a century, it would deposit no more than a fraction of an inch of mud. The hill was created over millions of human generations.
Today, scientists know from the radioactive dating of meteorites that the Earth is four and a half thousand million years old.
"Bollocks," he replied.
"Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
— George Bernard Shaw
In my time as a cop, if I lied while giving evidence in court, the way politicians routinely lie to the electorate, I would be in jail. They'd fire me, and I would lose my pension.
Trying someone in court is a serious matter. My job involved gathering sufficient evidence to prove the guilt of the person on trial, and that needed to be beyond a reasonable doubt. That evidence is tested. It has to relate to the case and come from a trustworthy source.
There is a legal burden of proof.
Politicians are neither tested to the same standard nor held responsible for their failings. Even journalists are not held accountable for distorting the truth. Certainly not in the same way a doctor or nurse would be counselled by their employers for abusing the trust of a patient.
There are tens of thousands of climate scientists who have independently studied their specific areas and arrived at the same conclusion, only for the man in the street to dismiss their work as irrelevant nonsense and to take the word of a podcaster, plumber or publican whose opinion is shaped from something they read on an obscure conspiracy site on the internet.
I've heard grown-ups — people with houses, cars, kids — who unashamedly think the Earth is flat. We have people in charge of health who still claim autism comes from vaccines,² despite that being right royally debunked.
You can't swing a cat online without hitting someone who thinks peer-reviewed science is a hoax.
Imagine a world where those who have spent a lifetime studying their chosen subject were respected for their knowledge. What if politicians acted on what they were told instead of paying lip service to the problem and then doing the opposite because it earns them votes or lobby money?
They use rhetoric and rendition instead of documentation and deposition. When their policies fail, despite what the experts have warned against, they brush off the stigma and blame others or unforeseen circumstances.
If they fail, they soon reappear in another political party, repeating the same untruths and unfounded policies and continue to reap ill-got gains.
Imagine if journalists, podcasters, advertisers, influencers, or anyone with an audience had to answer to a judge for peddling misinformation, lies and deceit. If we applied the same standard to them as we apply to evidence in court, standards would be raised. Facts would be checked. Truth would be relished, admired, honoured.
Instead, we live in a place where some bloke with a YouTube channel and a strong opinion is given equal weight to someone who's studied the subject for decades. I've heard arguments that facts don't matter because everyone has the right to an opinion, whether it is right or wrong.
If this sounds like madness, that's because it is.
We're oddly unconcerned that those in power lie to us.
Somewhere along the way, dishonesty became a strategy. Spin became policy. And while nurses, doctors, and police officers can still lose their jobs for a single lapse in ethics, ministers can fib their way through entire careers and still land a book deal, a peerage, and a guest spot on breakfast television.
We need the people in charge to take responsibility for the results of their actions. The buck should be returned to where it started.
There was a time when we trusted what journalists wrote. We might not have liked it, but we didn't question its basic truth. Now, trust in journalism hovers somewhere between that of an email from a Nigerian Prince and a withheld call.
The people in power are quick to denounce criticism as 'fake news', especially when that criticism is founded in truth. Often, it is those who protest too much who prove to be covering their ass.
Trust holds society together. If people think they're above the rules, things fall apart. We're currently witnessing a widespread institutional apathy.
We once looked to experts with respect for their sound expertise. Now we are lauding loudmouths with no credentials other than a high follower count. But here's the thing: expertise doesn't vanish just because it is unpopular.
We can demand better. We can call out the liars. We can start listening to people who know what they are talking about. And — just maybe — history won't look back at us and shake its head in dismay.
Malky McEwan
[1] Michael Gove, in the lead-up to Britain's referendum on Brexit.
[2] Fact-checking RFK