The Epistemic Crisis

1. What is the “epistemic crisis”?

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

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].

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].

2. What caused the crisis?

Authors disagree on emphasis but converge on several interacting drivers:

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].

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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?