Within the so-called “culture wars” dividing many nations politically, there is a persistent controversy, intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, over the trustworthiness of consensus science—the so-called “crisis of expertise.” When the science concerning climate change, mask wearing, or vaccinations becomes politicized, it loses its mooring in scientific evidence and reduces the effectiveness of both regulatory laws and the voices of scientists. Perhaps counterintuitively, however, the solution is likely not to wear “Because Science” T-shirts, while insisting on “cold, hard facts” and diagnosing as stupid those who believe the scientific theories of marginalized, minority-view scientists. Indeed, a certain level of modesty—regarding the uncertainties and tentativeness of even the best science—is necessary for the type of understanding and communication that might convince someone to change their scientific beliefs. Unfortunately, the reaction of some scholars to the crisis of expertise is unwittingly to idealize consensus science by identifying an anti-science ideology in certain segments of the citizenry, while easily ignoring the ideological, almost religious, belief structures on both sides in the crisis of expertise. Indeed, the arrogance of those who believe in consensus scientists (a group to which I belong) probably increases distrust of experts. How do we reduce that conflict over consensus science? In Wittgenstein’s formulation: “Conflict is dissipated in much the same way as the tension of a spring when you melt the mechanism (or dissolve it in nitric acid). This dissolution eliminates all tensions.” But what is the mechanism dividing us in scientific matters, and what can dissolve it?

The purpose of this book is to analyze the crisis of expertise in terms of ideology, by which I mean an inevitable worldview (and not the Marxian-inspired notion of a false consciousness, perhaps empowering a ruling class). I readily acknowledge the difficulty of useful discourse between groups who seem to live in different realities, and I draw on the recent work of sociologists who recommend modesty concerning probabilistic scientific models and data that can rarely be characterized as unchanging “cold, hard facts.”