Expertise: our compass in a storm
We can’t just proclaim what expertise is. It requires clear criteria, transparent procedures and scientific skills. Yves Flückiger, the president of the Swiss Academies of Sciences, shows what a US court decision teaches us about our democracies.
Yves Flückiger is the president of the Swiss Academies of Sciences a+. | Photo: Annette Boutellier
Last spring, a US federal judge raised a central question for our democracies and almost against his will: what is an expert? By suspending the vaccination reform carried out by the Trump administration, he recalled an obvious fact that our societies sometimes seem to forget, namely that we can’t just proclaim who’s an expert. Judge Brian Murphy’s decision reaffirmed a simple principle: a public policy based on science does not depend only on its objectives, but also on the procedures that produce it. It is not so much the content of the decision that is condemned here as the way it was formulated.
The brutal replacement of a recognised scientific committee with individuals chosen for their convictions rather than for their skills illustrates a worrying drift, i.e., towards ‘on-demand’ expertise. Murphy recalls, however, that expertise is based on precise criteria: demonstrated competence, transparent selection and collective deliberation.
Without these guarantees, it stops being science and starts becoming opinion. The argument that a politician could untie himself from these requirements on the basis of his democratic legitimacy was also rejected. A public decision cannot be arbitrary, even when it comes from an elected authority. It must be rationally justifiable, on the basis of established knowledge.
On social networks – as in some public debates – all voices seem to be equal. But as Murphy implicitly highlights, pluralism does not mean that all positions are equal. It assumes a structured debate within a community of skills. This is a worthy reminder, extending far beyond just America.
In Europe and Switzerland, where direct democracy gives particular responsibility to citizens, the quality of public debate is conditioned by the quality of expertise. Without reliable benchmarks, collective deliberation is exposed to disinformation and arbitrariness.
The value of science is not as an absolute truth, but as a demanding, collective procedure to get closer to what is true. It is these procedures – slow, imperfect, but robust – that are protected here by the law. In the age of global uncertainty, the challenge is not only to defend science, but to preserve the institutional conditions that make it possible. Without them, it is not only expertise that disappears; we also lose the very ability of our societies to make informed decisions. That is akin to losing a compass in the turmoil of a geopolitical storm.
