What is the epistemic crisis?

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What is the epistemic crisis?

Commentators use the phrase “epistemic crisis” to describe a breakdown in the shared procedures a society uses to decide what is true. In the United States this breakdown is visible in three intertwined trends.

1. Collapsing public trust in the institutions traditionally charged with producing and arbitrating knowledge (government, media, academia, science) [3][4][5].
2. Explosive growth of competing information channels that make it easy for false, partial or partisan claims to circulate more quickly than professional fact-checking can keep up [4][6][12][16].
3. A perception that the elites who lead those institutions repeatedly fail or behave strategically, thereby forfeiting their epistemic authority [7][8][9][15].

As Arnold Kling puts it, “epistemic crisis” is shorthand for “a condition in which people no longer know whom to trust” [6]. Dan Williams widens the definition to include the fear that the entire knowledge-producing class has become “ideologically captured” [7], while Sam Harris argues that the more acute danger comes from populist misinformation rather than elite error [11]. The concept therefore names a shared problem even though writers disagree about its primary villains.

What is causing the crisis?

• Politicization of knowledge institutions: Experimental evidence shows that merely describing an institution as favoring one party reduces trust among both in-party and out-party respondents [1].

• Demonstrated failures in scientific reliability: A large replication audit found that only 36 % of highly-cited psychology papers replicated [2]; popular write-ups go further, claiming “75 % of psychology claims are false” [13].

• Long-term decline in institutional trust: Trust in the federal government has fallen from 73 % in 1958 to around 16 % in 2024 [3]. Trust in scientists has slipped from a pandemic high of 39 % “a great deal” of confidence to 23 % in 2023 [5].

• Truth Decay and media fragmentation: RAND’s survey documents how a 24/7 information ecosystem rewards speed and outrage over accuracy, erodes a common set of facts and blurs the line between news and commentary [4].

• Elite communication mistakes: Yascha Mounk shows how major outlets often “move in unison,” amplifying early consensus narratives that later prove wrong [12]. Matthew Yglesias argues that elite misinformation is “underrated” because it can shape policy for years before being corrected [15].

• Social incentives inside expert communities: Steve Stewart-Williams cautions that professional societies taking partisan stands risk signaling that “our science is for our political team” and thereby weaken their credibility [20].

Examples of elite failure that fueled the epistemic crisis

• The Replication Crisis: Failure of journals, universities and funding agencies to ensure the reliability of published findings exposed systemic weaknesses in academic gate-keeping [2][13].

• COVID-19 communication: Nate Silver contends that public-health officials issued overconfident or inconsistent statements (e.g., early mask guidance, school closures), creating a “credibility black hole” [9]. Kling and Kahn make similar points about shifting goalposts [6][10].

• Financial crisis of 2008: Dan Williams lists regulators’ inability to foresee systemic risk as an example of expert failure that spurred populist backlash [8].

• Intelligence errors over Iraqi WMDs: Sam Harris treats these mistakes as paradigm cases of elite misjudgment that later empowered conspiracy thinking [11].

• Media misfires: The Economist chronicles episodes—ranging from the 2020 Tom Cotton lab-leak op-ed to the Gaza-hospital headline—where the New York Times leapt to conclusions that later required correction [18]. A veteran editor at NPR offers a parallel account inside public radio [19].

• Politicized scientific statements: Stewart-Williams notes that when scientific organizations endorsed a 2020 presidential candidate they alienated some of their own members and fed claims of bias [20].

Timeline of the discourse

1958-1974 High trust in government (>60 %) collapses after Vietnam and Watergate [3].

1990s Cable news and talk radio fragment the news audience; RAND traces early “truth decay” signals [4].

2003 Iraq WMD intelligence failure becomes a touchstone for skepticism toward experts [11].

2008 Global financial crisis deepens the idea that credentialed elites are error-prone [8].

2011-2015 Psychology replication crisis comes to light; Science publishes the 100-paper replication project in 2015 [2].

2016 “Fake news” enters mainstream vocabulary after the U.S. election [16].

2020-2022 Pandemic amplifies disputes over masks, schools, vaccines; public trust in scientists hits a five-year low by 2023 [5][9].

2023-2024 A wave of articles (Kling, Williams, Yglesias, Mounk, Silver) explicitly label the situation an “epistemic crisis” [6][7][9][12][15].

Conflicting perspectives in the sources

• Cause emphasis: Harris sees the main danger in populist misinformation [11], Yglesias in elite error [15]; Williams argues both reinforce each other [7].

• Severity: Pew data show gradual decline in trust [3][5], whereas Substack writers describe a precipice-like collapse [6][9].

• Solutions: RAND recommends civic education and media literacy [4]; Kling doubts top-down fixes and favors decentralized “trust networks” [6]; Harris calls for stronger gate-keeping on major platforms [11].

Sources

1. Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions, Even Among the Ideologically Aligned Public – Research Square (2024 pre-print; Empirical research)
2. Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science – Science (2015 peer-reviewed replication study)
3. Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024 – Pew Research Center (Long-running survey report)
4. Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life – RAND Corporation (2018 research report / policy study)
5. Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline – Pew Research Center (2023 survey report)
6. An Epistemic Crisis? – In My Tribe (Substack) (Opinion / Essay)
7. America’s Epistemological Crisis – Conspicuous Cognition (Commentary essay)
8. Elite Failures and Populist Backlash – Conspicuous Cognition (Commentary essay)
9. The Expert Class Is Failing, and So Is Biden’s Presidency – Silver Bulletin (Substack) (Opinion / Essay)
10. It’s the Epistemology, Stupid – Sam Kahn (Substack) (Opinion / Essay)
11. The Reckoning – Sam Harris (Substack) (Opinion / Essay)
12. Why the Media Moves in Unison – Persuasion (Opinion / Essay)
13. 75 % of Psychology Claims Are False – Unsafe Science (Substack) (Commentary / Replication-crisis analysis)
14. The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media – The Washington Post (2024 Opinion / Op-Ed)
15. Elite Misinformation Is an Underrated Problem – Slow Boring (Opinion / Essay)
16. The Fake News About Fake News – Boston Review (Long-form analysis / Essay)
17. How to Know Who to Trust, Potomac Plane Crash Edition – Jesse Singal (Substack) (Commentary / Media criticism)
18. When the New York Times Lost Its Way – 1843 Magazine (The Economist) (Magazine feature)
19. I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust – The Free Press (First-person essay / Media criticism)
20. Should Scientific Organizations Endorse Political Candidates? – Steve Stewart-Williams (Substack) (Commentary essay)

Question

What is the epistemic crisis? What is the cause of the epistemic crisis? What are some examples of elite failure the caused the epistemic crisis?