What is the epistemic crisis?

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What is the epistemic crisis?

“Epistemic crisis” is a shorthand now used in journalism, policy studies and commentary to describe a cluster of related problems:

A broad loss of social agreement on what constitutes reliable knowledge, evidence or expertise. A sustained drop in public trust in institutions historically relied upon to generate or curate knowledge—government, universities, science, and mainstream media. The rapid spread of conflicting factual claims, accompanied by the inability (or unwillingness) of citizens and leaders to adjudicate them.

RAND’s policy study “Truth Decay” framed the issue as “the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life” and dated its current wave to roughly the early‐2000s onward [4]. Subsequent academic work, survey research, and a cottage industry of essays and podcasts have popularized the phrase “epistemic crisis” to capture the same pattern [6][7][10].

What is the cause of the epistemic crisis?

No single cause is uncontested, but the literature converges on four interactive drivers:

1. Institutional trust collapse. Only about 16 % of Americans today say they trust the federal government “just about always or most of the time,” down from 77 % in 1964 [3]. Pew finds a parallel slide in trust in scientists: from 86 % expressing at least a “fair” amount of confidence in 2019 to 73 % in 2023 [5].

1. Politicization of knowledge‐producing bodies. Experimental evidence shows that when people learn an agency has taken overtly partisan positions, trust falls even among co-partisans [1]. Stewart-Williams argues that scientific organizations openly endorsing political candidates risks further erosion [20].

1. Failures of expert reproducibility and accuracy. The 2015 “Reproducibility Project” could replicate only 36 % of 100 landmark psychology findings [2]. Commentators such as Unsafe Science summarize the episode with the blunt headline “75 % of Psychology Claims Are False” [13]. RAND lists “Increasing disagreement about facts” as both symptom and driver [4].

1. Media‐system changes. Digital platforms lowered barriers to entry and amplified both misinformation and elite mistakes. Pew, RAND, and columnists like Matt Yglesias argue the information environment became “high‐choice,” making disengagement or selective exposure easy [4][15]. Commentators from inside legacy outlets (Leonard Downie Jr. on the Washington Post [14]; Uri Berliner on NPR [19]) blame ideological homogeneity for eroding credibility.

Opinion writers add other, sometimes conflicting hypotheses:

Arnold Kling emphasizes cognitive tribalism and “motives over methods” [6]. Sam Harris stresses social-media incentive structures [11]. Nate Silver foregrounds policy fiascos (e.g., pandemic messaging) and argues that “the expert class is failing” on performance grounds [9].

Examples of elite failure that exacerbated the crisis

(The list below is illustrative, not exhaustive, and reflects claims made by at least one cited source.)

• Psychology replication crisis (2011-present). Flagship journals published numerous findings that failed to replicate, exposing weaknesses in peer review [2][13].

• Pandemic policy reversals. Nate Silver cites shifting public-health guidance on masks and school closures as a textbook case where elites lost credibility [9]. RAND lists COVID-19 communication as a recent accelerant of Truth Decay [4].

• Financial crisis oversight (2008). RAND and Slow Boring note that regulatory agencies and economic forecasters largely missed systemic risk, feeding later populist distrust [4][15].

• Media narrative cascades. Jesse Singal’s “Potomac Plane Crash” essay describes how early, thinly sourced claims can harden into consensus news frames before facts are confirmed [17]. Adrian Wooldridge in 1843 Magazine details The New York Times’ internal turbulence and corrections fights [18].

• Politicized science endorsements. The Research Square study shows that institutional alignment with partisan positions decreases public trust, even among ideological allies [1]; Stewart-Williams offers NASA’s 2020 endorsement of a presidential candidate as a cautionary tale [20].

• Intelligence and policy failures in Iraq (2003). RAND lists the WMD assessments as a canonical modern case where elite error fed long-term skepticism [4]; Slow Boring argues it seeded today’s reflexive disbelief in official narratives [15].

Conflicts of interpretation: – RAND and Pew emphasize structural media and cognitive drivers, whereas Substack authors like Sam Kahn and “Conspicuous Cognition” foreground philosophical shifts in epistemology and elite incentives [7][10]. – Some commentators argue failures are overstated and what looks like an “epistemic crisis” is a normal feature of pluralistic democracy (e.g., Boston Review’s critique of “fake news” panic [16]).

Timeline of prominent public discourse

2015: Science publishes the Reproducibility Project, igniting mainstream concern about scientific reliability [2].

2016-2018: “Fake news” becomes a political slogan; RAND releases Truth Decay report (2018) detailing the phenomenon [4].

2019-2021: Pandemic intensifies scrutiny of expert performance; commentaries by Kling [6], Harris [11], and Unsafescience [13] popularize the phrase “epistemic crisis.”

2023: Pew releases data showing ongoing decline in trust in scientists [5]; commentators like Silver [9] and Yglesias [15] link the trend to elite policy errors.

2024: Research Square publishes experimental work on politicization of agencies [1]; a rash of insider essays (Berliner on NPR [19], Downie on WaPo [14]) argue newsroom homogeneity undermines credibility; Substack writers continue debate on epistemology vs. performance causes [7][10].

Summary

The epistemic crisis refers to a feedback loop in which shrinking trust and visible expert failures lower deference to institutions, which then increases politicization and incentives for sensational or ideological claims, further eroding trust. While causes are debated, most analyses agree that institutional trust collapse, politicization, replication failures, and media transformations jointly produce today’s fragmented information environment.

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)

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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?