Credentialism makes us stupid

For years now it has been a pet peeve of mine to see journalists write headlines like “scientists say” or “according to scientists”, which make “scientists” into a sort of infallible prophetic group who all think exactly the same. That just isn’t so. They should write headlines like “according to a research group at the University of Michigan”, which remind you that there is a (usually quite small) group of real humans behind whatever they are reporting upon, and which also imply at least a little bit that there might be people elsewhere who think differently.

That’s just one example of the problems caused by modern “credentialism”. By that word I’m thinking really of a mindset where:

1. The credentials you have, whether that be academic degrees you hold or the position you hold, matter more than what you actually know or what you have actually accomplished.

2. An inordinate amount of trust is placed in people with the right credentials or, flip-side of the same phenomenon, people who do not have the right credentials are dismissed without serious engagement.

We need to abandon that mindset… and slowly, maybe we are. Even the growth of platforms like Substack is arguably representative of people seeking out and finding the “independently intelligent”, people sharing valuable thoughts whether they have the right letters after their name or not. There also seems to be increasingly realization (and I say this as someone who is a huge fan of a true liberal education) that getting a college degree is sometimes more about socialization into a certain culture than it is about actually learning the stuff you need for that job, and maybe some sort of alternative training would work just as well and be way cheaper. So we can hope.

But a few others ways, if I may, in which credentialism makes us stupid:

1. Credentialism encourages conformity and groupthink. Something I tell students actually is, if you look back over the history of science, the skeptics were often right (indeed, basically every modern paradigm began with a few skeptics)… but they almost always get viciously attacked by the herd at first. Indeed quite often they are not vindicated until after their death. There is strength in numbers. As long as you say basically what everyone else is saying, the paycheck will keep flowing, you’ll keep your position, and if there is a professional organization that could threaten your credentials, they won’t threaten them. All that is true even if you are totally and repeatedly wrong. Indeed, I think much of the public health response to COVID-19 consisted of officials looking around to see what everyone else was doing, and making sure they were doing basically the same thing.

   Tara Ann Thieke @TaraAnnThieke

   Credentialism punishes people for being "contrarian" and that's how you get people saying okay, I'll lock my 7 year old away for 2 weeks while he cries out for mommy.  It's not science, it's fundamentalism with an idol called "the data" justifying anything and everything

   

   Peter Varelas @varelas_peter

   @anthonyfurey For those parents who believe that no parent would ever... https://t.co/Rs67imQySC

2. Credentialism allows you to disengage your own brain as you defer the hard process of thinking to “experts”. Now I actually have some sympathy for this attitude. Our world is awash in data. There is more to know than ever before. A thousand years ago, probably most of what you needed to know about the world you could “test” or “discover” for yourself if you needed to, or if you were skeptical. Today, more than ever before, people are asked to respond to claims they cannot possibly personally verify (“the Earth is slowly warming, and it’s humans what done it, and that’s a problem” is an excellent example). That makes the “authority” crisis we also have today that much more of a problem. And besides, who has the time to personally investigate all this stuff?
   
   Unfortunately, the experts get it wrong, and they get it wrong all the time. And they get it wrong for lots of reasons - basic incompetence (and you could write a whole book about what happens when a society values lots of other stuff more than they value competence), groupthink, bias in terms of worldview or politics or who they serve, financial incentives, and so on. It’s painful, but there is no substitute for reading widely, taking the time to learn about the topic, or looking at the data yourself, and making up your own mind about it. And yes, “but I don’t have the time!”… trust me, I sympathize. Oy.

3. Credentialism decreases personal and institutional responsibility. I saw this tweet from the good Mark Changizi today.

   Mark Changizi @MarkChangizi

   Double-masking now required for students all day at some schools.

   

   nbc4i.comBexley City Schools to require double masking or CDC equivalent for in-person returnBEXLEY, Ohio (WCMH) – Bexley City Schools is requiring two masks or a CDC equivalent for students and staff as they return to in-person learning. “The Evaluation Team reviewed several masking protocols and determined which options would provide protection equivalent or superior to double masking,” t…

   I think most of us believe (or did before COVID-19 anyway), that generally speaking humans like their freedom, they like making the decisions about how to run their life. It therefore seems counterintuitive, but it is true that low-level institutions (like your local school), want higher-level institutions (like the CDC) to recommend behaviors to them or, even better, to order them around completely. Because then (in the case of schools for example), angry parents are no longer their problem. Look, we’re just doing what the experts say. If you have a problem, take it up with them (of course, you can never actually reach them).
   
   We sometimes talk about having “national conversations” in America - there are no national conversations. You can’t have a national conversation. National conversations are a few people with very large microphones yelling at each other, followed by somebody with a lot of power doing whatever he probably wanted to do anyway. But you actually can have a local conversation, a serious local conversation, and you should. Credentialism allows people and institutions that should be made to have those conversations to escape them.

4. And finally, and I’ll make this brief because it is basically just my definition of credentialism repeated, but - credentialism makes “what the experts say” more important than “what actually works”. I saw a tweet from CNN a while back, which I won’t try to find again now, that was critical of Florida again reducing COVID restrictions “despite CDC guidance”. Now the positive side of this is that the replies were absolutely swarmed by people saying “yes, but this, a state with one of the oldest populations in the nation, has nonetheless stayed right in the middle of the pack in terms of COVID statistics - shouldn’t what has actually happened matter more than what the CDC says should work??!” You could have a fifth point here that “credentialism allows lazy journalism”, but you see the point.
   
   I have actually wondered if this is Star Trek influencing our culture. Star Trek is the ultimate “the models are always exactly right, the experts are always exactly right” world. Somehow, even if the Enterprise is encountering a never-before-seen situation, their predictive models are exactly right! Well that is nice, but that just isn’t reality. You can’t dismiss “what is actually working” because it is diverging from “what the experts say should work”. The former should matter much more than the latter. We don’t live on the holodeck.