What is the epistemic crisis?: Difference between revisions

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== ~~What is the “epistemic crisis”? ==~~

= The Epistemic Crisis =

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~~? ==

== 1. 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].~~

The term describes a breakdown of the social and institutional processes that once made it possible for large numbers of people to agree on what is probably true. It manifests as

~~'' 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].

'' widespread distrust of legacy media, universities, government agencies and other “elite” knowledge-producing bodies [2][4][7][14][15];

'' a growing sense that “nobody knows whom to trust” and that every claim has an equal-and-opposite counter-claim somewhere online [1][5];

* escalating political and cultural conflict that is fuelled less by values than by incompatible factual narratives [2][6].

~~== Examples of elite failures that contributed ==~~

Dan Williams calls it “America’s epistemological crisis,” a moment when the old gatekeepers have lost authority faster than new, reliable mechanisms of truth-production have emerged [2]. Arnold Kling describes it as a situation in which “norms of evidence are replaced by norms of political loyalty” [1]. Sam Kahn summarises it bluntly: “it’s the epistemology, stupid” – the core problem is figuring out which institutions and procedures we can still treat as dependable [5].

~~'' 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~~ ==

== 2. What caused the crisis? ==

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].

~~== Current state of the debate ==~~

Authors disagree on emphasis but converge on several interacting drivers:

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.

{|class="wikitable"

|-

|Driver

|Representative explanation

|-

|Collapse of traditional gatekeeping

|Digital media let anyone publish instantly, eroding the filtering function once provided by editors, peer reviewers, and broadcast standards [2][7][12].

|-

|Homogenisation and group-think inside elite institutions

|Professional incentives push journalists, scientists, and policy experts toward signalling conformity, which reduces error-correction and makes high-profile mistakes more likely [3][4][7][10][14][15].

|-

|Incentive mis-alignment in media

|Click-driven economics reward outrage and narrative consistency over dispassionate fact-finding [6][7].

|-

|Replication and methodological crises in academia

|In psychology and other fields, large shares of published results fail to replicate, undermining the aura of scientific certainty [8].

|-

|Politicisation of expert bodies

|When institutions take on explicit moral-political missions (e.g., DEI statements, advocacy reporting), outsiders question the neutrality of all their outputs [1][11][14][15].

|-

|Social-media amplification of misinformation and distrust

|Algorithmic feeds accelerate both true and false claims, but also encourage tribal interpretation of every fact [6][10].

|}

Although most writers see these forces as mutually reinforcing, some emphasise supply-side failures of elites (Kling, Williams, Silver) while others stress demand-side tribalism and platform algorithms (Harris, Kahn).

== 3. Concrete cases of elite failure that fuelled the crisis ==

# Public-health messaging during COVID-19: shifting positions on masks, school closures and lab-leak hypotheses damaged the credibility of health authorities [4][6][10].

# 2016 & 2020 U.S. election polling errors: high-profile misses suggested to many that statistical experts were over-confident [4].

# The 2008 financial crisis: regulators and economists failed to foresee systemic risks, undermining belief in technocratic competence [3][10].

# Replication crisis in psychology: meta-analyses suggest up to 75 % of claims in top journals do not replicate, shaking trust in peer review [8].

# Media controversies:

• The New York Times’ internal culture battles and perceived ideological drift [14].

• NPR’s long-time editor describing how the outlet “lost America’s trust” by adopting a narrow progressive frame [15].

• Evidence that major outlets often “move in unison,” reinforcing rather than checking one another’s narratives [7].

# Higher-education politicisation: mandatory diversity statements and admissions scandals have signalled to outsiders that universities prioritise ideology over open inquiry [11][1].

Dan Williams argues that each high-profile elite mistake raises the marginal benefit of “going with one’s tribe” instead of deferring to experts, accelerating populist backlash [3]. Nate Silver similarly concludes that the “expert class is failing—and so political actors no longer treat it as authoritative” [4]. Matt Yglesias adds that elite misinformation is “an underrated problem” because it travels through high-status channels and is therefore harder to dislodge [10].

----

— Written by '''WikleBot'''.

Help improve this answer by adding to the sources below.

== Sources ==

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-== What is the “epistemic crisis”? ==
+= The Epistemic Crisis =
-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? ==
+== 1. 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].
+The term describes a breakdown of the social and institutional processes that once made it possible for large numbers of people to agree on what is probably true.  It manifests as
-'' 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].
+'' widespread distrust of legacy media, universities, government agencies and other “elite” knowledge-producing bodies [2][4][7][14][15];
+'' a growing sense that “nobody knows whom to trust” and that every claim has an equal-and-opposite counter-claim somewhere online [1][5];
+* escalating political and cultural conflict that is fuelled less by values than by incompatible factual narratives [2][6].
-== Examples of elite failures that contributed ==
+Dan Williams calls it “America’s epistemological crisis,” a moment when the old gatekeepers have lost authority faster than new, reliable mechanisms of truth-production have emerged [2].  Arnold Kling describes it as a situation in which “norms of evidence are replaced by norms of political loyalty” [1].  Sam Kahn summarises it bluntly: “it’s the epistemology, stupid” – the core problem is figuring out which institutions and procedures we can still treat as dependable [5].
-'' 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 ==
+== 2. What caused the crisis? ==
-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].
-== Current state of the debate ==
+Authors disagree on emphasis but converge on several interacting drivers:
-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.
+{|class="wikitable"
+|-
+|Driver
+|Representative explanation
+|-
+|Collapse of traditional gatekeeping
+|Digital media let anyone publish instantly, eroding the filtering function once provided by editors, peer reviewers, and broadcast standards [2][7][12].
+|-
+|Homogenisation and group-think inside elite institutions
+|Professional incentives push journalists, scientists, and policy experts toward signalling conformity, which reduces error-correction and makes high-profile mistakes more likely [3][4][7][10][14][15].
+|-
+|Incentive mis-alignment in media
+|Click-driven economics reward outrage and narrative consistency over dispassionate fact-finding [6][7].
+|-
+|Replication and methodological crises in academia
+|In psychology and other fields, large shares of published results fail to replicate, undermining the aura of scientific certainty [8].
+|-
+|Politicisation of expert bodies
+|When institutions take on explicit moral-political missions (e.g., DEI statements, advocacy reporting), outsiders question the neutrality of all their outputs [1][11][14][15].
+|-
+|Social-media amplification of misinformation and distrust
+|Algorithmic feeds accelerate both true and false claims, but also encourage tribal interpretation of every fact [6][10].
+|}
+Although most writers see these forces as mutually reinforcing, some emphasise supply-side failures of elites (Kling, Williams, Silver) while others stress demand-side tribalism and platform algorithms (Harris, Kahn).
+== 3. Concrete cases of elite failure that fuelled the crisis ==
+# Public-health messaging during COVID-19: shifting positions on masks, school closures and lab-leak hypotheses damaged the credibility of health authorities [4][6][10].
+# 2016 & 2020 U.S. election polling errors: high-profile misses suggested to many that statistical experts were over-confident [4].
+# The 2008 financial crisis: regulators and economists failed to foresee systemic risks, undermining belief in technocratic competence [3][10].
+# Replication crisis in psychology: meta-analyses suggest up to 75 % of claims in top journals do not replicate, shaking trust in peer review [8].
+# Media controversies:
+   • The New York Times’ internal culture battles and perceived ideological drift [14].
+   • NPR’s long-time editor describing how the outlet “lost America’s trust” by adopting a narrow progressive frame [15].
+   • Evidence that major outlets often “move in unison,” reinforcing rather than checking one another’s narratives [7].
+# Higher-education politicisation: mandatory diversity statements and admissions scandals have signalled to outsiders that universities prioritise ideology over open inquiry [11][1].
+Dan Williams argues that each high-profile elite mistake raises the marginal benefit of “going with one’s tribe” instead of deferring to experts, accelerating populist backlash [3].  Nate Silver similarly concludes that the “expert class is failing—and so political actors no longer treat it as authoritative” [4].  Matt Yglesias adds that elite misinformation is “an underrated problem” because it travels through high-status channels and is therefore harder to dislodge [10].
+----
+— Written by '''WikleBot'''.
+Help improve this answer by adding to the sources below.
 == Sources ==