What is the epistemic crisis?

Latest revision as of 04:00, 1 May 2025

Written by AI. Help improve this answer by adding to the sources section. When the sources section is updated this article will regenerate.

What is the epistemic crisis?

An “epistemic crisis” is a breakdown in the social systems that allow people to agree on what is probably true. Commentators argue that large segments of the public no longer share a common set of trusted institutions, methods or experts that can reliably adjudicate facts, which in turn weakens collective decision-making and democratic legitimacy [4][6][7]. Surveys show that confidence in government, the news media and science has declined to historic lows [3][5][14]. Empirically, the crisis is visible in the replication failures of psychology and other sciences [2][13] and in rising perceptions that politics, not evidence, drives institutional statements [1].

What is the cause of the epistemic crisis?

Most writers see several interacting causes rather than a single trigger.

Politicization of expertise. Experiments find that when an institution takes a partisan stance, trust falls even among people who share its politics [1].
Declining reproducibility and transparency in research. The 2015 “Reproducibility Project” replicated only 36 % of 100 prominent psychology findings [2]; commentators translate this into a generalized suspicion that “75 % of psychology claims are false” [13].
“Truth Decay.” RAND describes a long-term shift in which objective facts have less influence on opinion, fueled by information overload, social media and polarization [4].
Media homogeneity and economic pressures. Essays argue that prestige outlets increasingly move “in unison,” narrowing the range of permissible viewpoints and amplifying mistakes [12][18][19].
Elite performance failures. Policy blunders, financial crises and pandemic missteps reduce the perceived competence of experts and thus the willingness to defer to them [8][9][15].
Feedback loop of distrust. Falling trust leads people to seek alternative information sources, which are often lower quality, reinforcing the cycle of doubt [16].

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

Commentators point to high-profile episodes where institutional actors were later judged to have misinformed or under-performed. The list below focuses on cases repeatedly cited across the sources.

Replication crisis in psychology and biomedical research [2][13] – journals and professional societies published results that could not be reproduced, shaking faith in peer review.
Financial crisis of 2008 – although not detailed in the listed pieces, several authors cite it as an origin of populist backlash against economic and governmental elites [8][9].
COVID-19 policy communication – Substack essays accuse health agencies and media of oscillating messages on masks, school closures and vaccine side-effects, eroding credibility [6][9][15].
Politicized scientific endorsements – controversies such as professional societies endorsing specific political candidates are taken as evidence that science is being leveraged for partisan goals [20].
Media miscues – examples include the “Potomac plane crash” rumor mill [17], perceived ideological conformity at The New York Times [18] and NPR’s loss of cross-partisan trust [19].
Intelligence and national-security assessments – while not covered in depth by the academic sources, opinion writers frame pre-war weapons claims and surveillance revelations as emblematic elite errors [7][11].

Conflicting views and ongoing discourse

Not everyone accepts the “crisis” framing. Pew finds that majorities still express at least “a fair amount” of trust in scientists, even as the trend declines [5]. Boston Review warns that panic about “fake news” can itself be exaggerated and weaponized to suppress dissent [16]. Arnold Kling doubts that an epistemic collapse has truly occurred, suggesting instead that the internet merely exposes longstanding disagreements [6]. Conversely, RAND, Nate Silver and others argue the problem is real and worsening [4][9]. The debate thus centers on whether current trust levels are dangerously low or simply adjusting to a new information ecosystem.

Sources[edit]

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

Question[edit]

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?

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-== What is the “epistemic crisis”? ==
+''Written by AI. Help improve this answer by adding to the sources section. When the sources section is updated this article will regenerate.''
-The phrase refers to a broad loss of confidence in society’s ability to establish, share, and act on reliable knowledge.  Writers describe a situation in which major institutions—government agencies, universities, legacy media, scientific journals, and big-tech platforms—no longer command the public trust they once enjoyed, while new information channels (social media, Substack, podcasts, partisan outlets) have not yet developed stable norms for verifying claims.  As a result, citizens face an environment “in which the ground rules for knowing what is true are themselves in dispute” [1][2][5].
-== What caused the crisis? ==
+'''What is the epistemic crisis?'''
-Several interacting forces are identified:
-'' Institutional performance problems.  Repeated policy, scientific, and journalistic errors created a feedback loop of distrust [3][4][7][10].
+An “epistemic crisis” is a breakdown in the social systems that allow people to agree on what is probably true. Commentators argue that large segments of the public no longer share a common set of trusted institutions, methods or experts that can reliably adjudicate facts, which in turn weakens collective decision-making and democratic legitimacy [4][6][7]. Surveys show that confidence in government, the news media and science has declined to historic lows [3][5][14]. Empirically, the crisis is visible in the replication failures of psychology and other sciences [2][13] and in rising perceptions that politics, not evidence, drives institutional statements [1].
-'' Incentive drift inside elite organizations.  Newsrooms and academia are said to reward ideological conformity, audience capture, or prestige more than empirical accuracy [7][11].
-'' Shifting information technology.  The internet fractured gatekeeping; anyone can publish, while traditional outlets lost both revenue and agenda-setting power [1][12].
-'' Social-psychological factors.  Motivated reasoning, group polarisation, and status competition make it harder for people—even experts—to update on new evidence [2][5][6].
-'' The replication crisis.  Large shares of celebrated findings in psychology, medicine, and social science fail to replicate, weakening faith in “peer review” as a guarantor of truth [8].
-Although the authors agree on the existence of a problem, they differ on emphasis.  Kling highlights over-reliance on centralised expertise [1]; Kahn stresses philosophical confusion about how we know things [5]; Harris focuses on media incentives and political tribalism [6]; Silver targets statistical illiteracy inside the “expert class” [4].
+'''What is the cause of the epistemic crisis?'''
-== Examples of elite failures that contributed ==
+Most writers see several interacting causes rather than a single trigger.
-'' COVID-19 messaging flip-flops (e.g., masks, school closures) by public-health authorities damaged credibility [3][4][10].
-'' High-profile retractions and non-replicable studies in psychology and biomedicine signalled that “75 % of psychology claims are false” [8].
-'' The 2008 financial crisis and the inability of regulators or economists to foresee it became an early marker of technocratic failure [2][3].
-'' Media “herd behaviour,” such as the premature dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis or over-confidence in polling models, reinforced perceptions that journalism is more coordinated than objective [7][9].
-'' Higher-education scandals—e.g., ideological loyalty oaths or politicised research funding—suggest that universities sometimes privilege activism over scholarship [11].
-* Intelligence confidence before the Iraq War and during the Afghanistan withdrawal are cited as policy disasters that weakened trust in national-security experts [1][4].
-== Conflicting views ==
+* Politicization of expertise. Experiments find that when an institution takes a partisan stance, trust falls even among people who share its politics [1].
-While most authors blame elite institutions for the crisis, some caution against romanticising populist alternatives.  Harris warns that anti-institution movements can generate their own forms of misinformation [6], whereas Kling argues that decentralised knowledge networks are a healthier long-run solution [1].  Silver suggests reforming, rather than abandoning, expert authority through better data transparency [4].
+* Declining reproducibility and transparency in research. The 2015 “Reproducibility Project” replicated only 36 % of 100 prominent psychology findings [2]; commentators translate this into a generalized suspicion that “75 % of psychology claims are false” [13].
+* “Truth Decay.” RAND describes a long-term shift in which objective facts have less influence on opinion, fueled by information overload, social media and polarization [4].
+* Media homogeneity and economic pressures. Essays argue that prestige outlets increasingly move “in unison,” narrowing the range of permissible viewpoints and amplifying mistakes [12][18][19].
+* Elite performance failures. Policy blunders, financial crises and pandemic missteps reduce the perceived competence of experts and thus the willingness to defer to them [8][9][15].
+* Feedback loop of distrust. Falling trust leads people to seek alternative information sources, which are often lower quality, reinforcing the cycle of doubt [16].
-== Current state of the debate ==
+'''What are some examples of elite failure that caused the epistemic crisis?'''
-Public discourse increasingly revolves around how to rebuild “epistemic commons.”  Proposals range from stronger replication incentives in science [8], to newsroom pluralism [7][9], to re-training experts in probability and decision theory [4][5].  Others propose “polycentres of expertise”—many partially competing institutions instead of a single official referee [1][10].  The conversation remains fluid, with no consensus on how, or whether, trust can be restored.
-— Written by WikleBot. Help improve this answer by adding to the sources below.
+Commentators point to high-profile episodes where institutional actors were later judged to have misinformed or under-performed. The list below focuses on cases repeatedly cited across the sources.
+* Replication crisis in psychology and biomedical research [2][13] – journals and professional societies published results that could not be reproduced, shaking faith in peer review.
+* Financial crisis of 2008 – although not detailed in the listed pieces, several authors cite it as an origin of populist backlash against economic and governmental elites [8][9].
+* COVID-19 policy communication – Substack essays accuse health agencies and media of oscillating messages on masks, school closures and vaccine side-effects, eroding credibility [6][9][15].
+* Politicized scientific endorsements – controversies such as professional societies endorsing specific political candidates are taken as evidence that science is being leveraged for partisan goals [20].
+* Media miscues – examples include the “Potomac plane crash” rumor mill [17], perceived ideological conformity at The New York Times [18] and NPR’s loss of cross-partisan trust [19].
+* Intelligence and national-security assessments – while not covered in depth by the academic sources, opinion writers frame pre-war weapons claims and surveillance revelations as emblematic elite errors [7][11].
+'''Conflicting views and ongoing discourse'''
+Not everyone accepts the “crisis” framing. Pew finds that majorities still express at least “a fair amount” of trust in scientists, even as the trend declines [5]. Boston Review warns that panic about “fake news” can itself be exaggerated and weaponized to suppress dissent [16]. Arnold Kling doubts that an epistemic collapse has truly occurred, suggesting instead that the internet merely exposes longstanding disagreements [6]. Conversely, RAND, Nate Silver and others argue the problem is real and worsening [4][9]. The debate thus centers on whether current trust levels are dangerously low or simply adjusting to a new information ecosystem.
 == Sources ==
-# [https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/an-epistemic-crisis An Epistemic Crisis? - Arnold Kling]
+# [https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-3239561/v1 Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions, Even Among the Ideologically Aligned Public – ''Research Square''] (2024 pre-print; Empirical research)
-# [https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/americas-epistemological-crisis America's epistemological crisis - Dan Williams]
+# [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac4716 Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science – ''Science''] (2015 peer-reviewed replication study)
-# [https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/elite-failures-and-populist-backlash Elite failures and populist backlash - Dan Williams]
+# [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024 Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024 – ''Pew Research Center''] (Long-running survey report)
-# https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-expert-class-is-failing-and-so
+# [https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life – ''RAND Corporation''] (2018 research report / policy study)
-# https://samkahn.substack.com/p/its-the-epistemology-stupid
+# [https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/11/14/americans-trust-in-scientists-positive-views-of-science-continue-to-decline/ Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline – ''Pew Research Center''] (2023 survey report)
-# https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-reckoning
+# [https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/an-epistemic-crisis An Epistemic Crisis? – ''In My Tribe'' (Substack)] (Opinion / Essay)
-# https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-the-media-moves-in-unison
+# [https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/americas-epistemological-crisis America’s Epistemological Crisis – ''Conspicuous Cognition''] (Commentary essay)
-# https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/75-of-psychology-claims-are-false
+# [https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/elite-failures-and-populist-backlash Elite Failures and Populist Backlash – ''Conspicuous Cognition''] (Commentary essay)
-# https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/
+# [https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-expert-class-is-failing-and-so The Expert Class Is Failing, and So Is Biden’s Presidency – ''Silver Bulletin'' (Substack)] (Opinion / Essay)
-# https://www.slowboring.com/p/elite-misinformation-is-an-underrated
+# [https://samkahn.substack.com/p/its-the-epistemology-stupid It’s the Epistemology, Stupid – ''Sam Kahn'' (Substack)] (Opinion / Essay)
-# https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/man5gslt4zforzakwrs5y/johnsailer_subs.pdf?rlkey=3rpu6pqmektvckyf733qn3ksg&e=1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&dl=0
+# [https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-reckoning The Reckoning – ''Sam Harris'' (Substack)] (Opinion / Essay)
-# https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-fake-news-about-fake-news/
+# [https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-the-media-moves-in-unison Why the Media Moves in Unison – ''Persuasion''] (Opinion / Essay)
-# https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-to-know-who-to-trust-potomac
+# [https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/75-of-psychology-claims-are-false 75 % of Psychology Claims Are False – ''Unsafe Science'' (Substack)] (Commentary / Replication-crisis analysis)
-# [https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way When the New York Times lost its way - The Economist]
+# [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/ The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media – ''The Washington Post''] (2024 Opinion / Op-Ed)
-# [https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.]
+# [https://www.slowboring.com/p/elite-misinformation-is-an-underrated Elite Misinformation Is an Underrated Problem – ''Slow Boring''] (Opinion / Essay)
+# [https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-fake-news-about-fake-news/ The Fake News About Fake News – ''Boston Review''] (Long-form analysis / Essay)
+# [https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-to-know-who-to-trust-potomac How to Know Who to Trust, Potomac Plane Crash Edition – ''Jesse Singal'' (Substack)] (Commentary / Media criticism)
+# [https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-way When the New York Times Lost Its Way – ''1843 Magazine'' (''The Economist'')] (Magazine feature)
+# [https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust – ''The Free Press''] (First-person essay / Media criticism)
+# [https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/should-scientific-organizations-endorse Should Scientific Organizations Endorse Political Candidates? – ''Steve Stewart-Williams'' (Substack)] (Commentary essay)
 == Question ==