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where the so-called ‘experts’ have got us. They are a bunch of liars, crooks, and thieves.” A national poll taken that month found that faced with a congressional contest between someone with experience in the job and a candidate without it, people preferred a novice by 48 to 23 percent. Perhaps this can be chalked up to business—or politics—as usual in the United States. Politicians as a group have seldom enjoyed high popularity in America, 2010 was a year when many voters were angry, and there is a national tradition, especially when times are hard, of wanting to “throw the rascals out” of office—all of them.

These days, however, experience and expertise in other areas don’t command much respect, either. In the fall of 2010, Tom met Professor Nicholas Comerford, a soil scientist at the University of Florida and the 2010 president of the Soil Science Society of America, who told him this story: “I have ten acres of land and decided to plant some blueberries this year. There is a Florida cattleman I know, from an old family from the South, who is now in his eighties. His kids won’t let him raise cattle anymore so he went into blueberries instead. I went to pick up some blueberry plants from him to plant on my own land and we got to talking about things. The subject of climate change came up, and he said to me, ‘I don’t believe any of that climate change stuff.’ And I said, ‘Well, we probably disagree on that, but if you like I could tell you what my views are and why I believe in it.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m happy with my opinions.’ Great guy, salt of the earth, but just not interested.”

Skepticism of expert opinion is always appropriate: It is in fact at the heart of the scientific method. Indeed, a measure of skepticism about all opinions, especially one’s own, is healthy. But in the ever more complicated world we are living in, the professional judgments of experts are, in the end, indispensable. The details of technical and scientific fields lie beyond the easy comprehension of almost all nonspecialists. Such details are like foreign languages, and the rest of us have to rely on experts to translate for us. Otherwise, like travelers in a country whose language we don’t know, we will get hopelessly lost. This is especially true at a time when we have to make drastic cuts in our national, state, and local budgets. We should not simply reduce these budgets across the board. We should do so with a strategy informed by expertise on the world in which we are living and the requirements for thriving in it.

It isn’t just scientists and those regarded as experts who suffer from a lack of credibility. People in positions of authority everywhere have less influence than in the past. In the landscape of American education it is generally acknowledged that the country’s colleges and universities stand out, continuing to lead the world. Yet even at this level teachers suffer from a shortage of authority, which makes it hard for them to do their jobs.

Commenting on a book on deficiencies in student learning on American college campuses in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Benton, the pen name of a professor of English, wrote:

It has become difficult to give students honest feedback. The slightest criticisms have to be cushioned by a warm blanket of praise and encouragement to avoid provoking oppositional defiance or complete breakdowns … Increasingly, time-pressured college teachers ask themselves, “What grade will ensure no complaint from the student, or worse, a quasi-legal battle over whether the instructions for an assignment were clear enough?”

Indeed, Americans have little confidence in virtually every institution, a poll sponsored by the Associated Press and the National Constitution Center reported in September 2010. The scientific community, for example, commanded the confidence of only 30 percent of the respondents and organized religion of only 18 percent, and they outranked all but two of the total of eighteen institutions listed—those two being the military and small business. This augurs badly for the