What is the epistemic crisis?

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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?

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.

Collapsing public trust in the institutions traditionally charged with producing and arbitrating knowledge (government, media, academia, science) [3][4][5].
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].
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].

Source Analysis

Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions (ResearchSquare pre-print) – experimental social-science study.
Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science (Science journal article) – large-scale replication audit.
Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024 (Pew Research Center) – longitudinal survey report.
Truth Decay (RAND Corporation) – policy research monograph.
Americans’ Trust in Scientists… (Pew Research Center) – survey report.
An Epistemic Crisis? (Arnold Kling) – opinion essay / Substack.
America’s epistemological crisis (Dan Williams) – analytical essay / Substack.
Elite failures and populist backlash (Dan Williams) – analytical essay / Substack.
The expert class is failing… (Nate Silver) – journalistic commentary / Substack.
It’s the Epistemology, Stupid (Sam Kahn) – opinion essay / Substack.
The Reckoning (Sam Harris) – podcast / essay transcript.
Why the Media Moves in Unison (Yascha Mounk) – investigative commentary.
75 % of Psychology Claims are False (Lee Jussim) – explanatory blog post.
The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media (Jeff Bezos op-ed) – newspaper opinion column.
Elite misinformation is an underrated problem (Matthew Yglesias) – policy commentary / Substack.
The Fake News about Fake News (Boston Review) – magazine essay.
How To Know Who To Trust… (Jesse Singal) – media criticism / Substack.
When the New York Times lost its way (The Economist) – investigative feature.
I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years… (The Free Press) – insider account.
Should Scientific Organizations Endorse Political Candidates? (Steve Stewart-Williams) – opinion essay / Substack.

Sources

Study: Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions, Even Among the Ideologically Aligned Public

2. Study: Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science

Data-driven Analysis:

3. Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024 - Pew Research

4. Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life - RAND Corporation 5. Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Positive Views of Science Continue to Decline - Pew Research

Investigative Journalism & Commentary:

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?

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 ''Written by AI. Help improve this answer by adding to the sources section. When the sources section is updated this article will regenerate.''
-The epistemic crisis
+----
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-An “epistemic crisis” is a period in which large parts of the public lose confidence that existing institutions, experts, and information channels can reliably tell them what is true. Dan Williams defines it as a breakdown in the shared rules we use “to decide which claims to believe” [7], while Arnold Kling frames it as a collapse in “common knowledge” that once under-girded political and scientific debate [6]. RAND’s Truth Decay project similarly stresses the “diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life” [4].
+== What is the epistemic crisis? ==
-Across surveys, trust in government, the news media, and even science has fallen to historic lows [3][5]. Replication failures in research [2] and open disagreements among experts during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the sense that no authority can be taken at its word [6][8]. The result, according to Nate Silver, is that “the expert class is failing” and the public no longer believes that technocrats can steer society through crises [9].
+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.
-Causes of the crisis
+# Collapsing public trust in the institutions traditionally charged with producing and arbitrating knowledge (government, media, academia, science) [3][4][5].
---------------------
+# 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].
+# A perception that the elites who lead those institutions repeatedly fail or behave strategically, thereby forfeiting their epistemic authority [7][8][9][15].
-# Politicization of expertise. When scientific or professional bodies take overt political stances, trust erodes—especially among those who would normally be ideologically aligned [1][16].
+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.
-# Proven elite error. High-profile mistakes (e.g., financial crisis forecasts, Iraq WMD intelligence, early COVID messaging) create feedback loops of skepticism [9][13].
-# Low reproducibility in the sciences. The large‐scale replication study in psychology found that only ~36 % of seminal results replicated, feeding popular narratives that “75 % of psychology claims are false” [2][12].
-# Fragmented media ecosystems. Cable news, social platforms, and partisan outlets flood audiences with conflicting frames, while legacy media face accusations of groupthink [13][14].
-# Cognitive overload & motivated reasoning. RAND highlights that a 24/7 information environment pushes citizens toward heuristics—trusting in-group narratives rather than weighing evidence [4].
-Examples of elite failures that fueled the crisis
+== What is causing the crisis? ==
--------------------------------------------------
-* The replication crisis. Published failures to reproduce cornerstone psychology findings undermined faith in peer review [2][12].
+* 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].
-* COVID-19 messaging reversals. Shifts on masks, school closures, and lab-leak discourse were perceived as incompetence or bias by many commentators [6][9].
+* 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].
-* Financial crisis of 2008. Economists, ratings agencies, and regulators failed to anticipate systemic risk, delegitimizing macroeconomic expertise [9][11].
+* 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].
-* Iraq War intelligence (2003). Faulty assessments on weapons of mass destruction eroded trust in both intelligence services and major newspapers that uncritically amplified them [11][14].
+* 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].
-* Media scandals. Controversies at The New York Times [14] and NPR [15] are cited as proof that newsroom cultures can become insular, ideological, or error-prone.
+* 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].
-* Political endorsements by scientific bodies. Critics argue that when organizations such as the AMA or scientific societies endorse candidates, they appear partisan and diminish perceived neutrality [16].
+* 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].
-Timeline of the public discourse
+== Examples of elite failure that fueled the epistemic crisis ==
---------------------------------
-–1970s: Trust in U.S. federal government peaks at 73 % (1958) but starts a long decline after Vietnam and Watergate [3].
+* 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].
-s: Rise of 24-hour cable news and talk radio creates segmented audiences.
+* 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].
-–2008: Iraq intelligence failure and Global Financial Crisis intensify scrutiny of expert judgment.
+* Financial crisis of 2008:  Dan Williams lists regulators’ inability to foresee systemic risk as an example of expert failure that spurred populist backlash [8].
-–2015: Social media platforms scale. Science publishes the first large replication study, revealing systemic weaknesses in psychology [2]. RAND coins “Truth Decay” (2018) [4].
+* Intelligence errors over Iraqi WMDs:  Sam Harris treats these mistakes as paradigm cases of elite misjudgment that later empowered conspiracy thinking [11].
-–2021: COVID-19 brings unprecedented reliance on expert guidance. Communication miscues and politicization deepen skepticism [5][6][9].
+* 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].
-–2024: Pew reports record-low trust in scientists among many demographic groups [5]; commentators declare an “epistemic crisis” [6][7][9].
+* 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].
-Conflicting views in the discourse
+== Timeline of the discourse ==
-----------------------------------
-* Some analysts (e.g., Yglesias [11]) emphasize elite misinformation; others (Boston Review [13]) argue that the “fake news” panic itself is overstated.
+-1974 High trust in government (>60 %) collapses after Vietnam and Watergate [3].
-* Sam Harris [10] sees the crisis largely as a problem of online disinformation, while Dan Williams [7] stresses institutional failures.
+s Cable news and talk radio fragment the news audience; RAND traces early “truth decay” signals [4].
-* Lee Jussim [12] portrays replication problems as evidence of widespread scientific unreliability, whereas the original Science replication paper urges incremental reform, not wholesale distrust [2].
+ Iraq WMD intelligence failure becomes a touchstone for skepticism toward experts [11].
-Source Analysis
+ Global financial crisis deepens the idea that credentialed elites are error-prone [8].
----------------
-# Peer-reviewed preprint (political science / psychology)
+-2015 Psychology replication crisis comes to light; Science publishes the 100-paper replication project in 2015 [2].
-# Peer-reviewed journal article (Science, reproducibility study)
-# Survey report (Pew Research Center)
+ “Fake news” enters mainstream vocabulary after the U.S. election [16].
-# Policy research report (RAND Corporation)
-# Survey report (Pew Research Center)
+-2022 Pandemic amplifies disputes over masks, schools, vaccines; public trust in scientists hits a five-year low by 2023 [5][9].
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Arnold Kling, Substack)
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Dan Williams, Substack)
+-2024 A wave of articles (Kling, Williams, Yglesias, Mounk, Silver) explicitly label the situation an “epistemic crisis” [6][7][9][12][15].
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Dan Williams, Substack)
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Nate Silver, Substack)
+== Conflicting perspectives in the sources ==
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Sam Khan, Substack)
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Sam Harris, Substack)
+* Cause emphasis: Harris sees the main danger in populist misinformation [11], Yglesias in elite error [15]; Williams argues both reinforce each other [7].
-# Opinion essay / commentary summarizing academic literature (Lee Jussim, Substack)
-# Magazine essay / investigative journalism (Boston Review)
+* Severity: Pew data show gradual decline in trust [3][5], whereas Substack writers describe a precipice-like collapse [6][9].
-# Magazine essay / investigative journalism (The Economist)
-# Opinion essay / insider account (The FP)
+* 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].
-# Opinion essay / commentary (Steve Stewart-Williams, Substack)
+== Source Analysis ==
+# Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions (ResearchSquare pre-print) – experimental social-science study.
+# Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science (Science journal article) – large-scale replication audit.
+# Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024 (Pew Research Center) – longitudinal survey report.
+# Truth Decay (RAND Corporation) – policy research monograph.
+# Americans’ Trust in Scientists… (Pew Research Center) – survey report.
+# An Epistemic Crisis? (Arnold Kling) – opinion essay / Substack.
+# America’s epistemological crisis (Dan Williams) – analytical essay / Substack.
+# Elite failures and populist backlash (Dan Williams) – analytical essay / Substack.
+# The expert class is failing… (Nate Silver) – journalistic commentary / Substack.
+# It’s the Epistemology, Stupid (Sam Kahn) – opinion essay / Substack.
+# The Reckoning (Sam Harris) – podcast / essay transcript.
+# Why the Media Moves in Unison (Yascha Mounk) – investigative commentary.
+# 75 % of Psychology Claims are False (Lee Jussim) – explanatory blog post.
+# The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media (Jeff Bezos op-ed) – newspaper opinion column.
+# Elite misinformation is an underrated problem (Matthew Yglesias) – policy commentary / Substack.
+# The Fake News about Fake News (Boston Review) – magazine essay.
+# How To Know Who To Trust… (Jesse Singal) – media criticism / Substack.
+# When the New York Times lost its way (The Economist) – investigative feature.
+# I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years… (The Free Press) – insider account.
+# Should Scientific Organizations Endorse Political Candidates? (Steve Stewart-Williams) – opinion essay / Substack.
 == Sources ==