> Those who study the decline in standards of evidence and reasoning in the U.S. electorate chiefly blame politicians’ concerted efforts from the 1970s to discr

> Those who study the decline in standards of evidence and reasoning in the U.S. electorate chiefly blame politicians’ concerted efforts from the 1970s to discredit expertise, degrade trust in Congress and its members, even question the legitimacy of government itself Really. An academic blames politicians for the fact that academic's opinions aren't automatically accepted as fact. He then says politicians made concerted efforts to degrade trust in ... themselves. I have yet to see a politician make a concerted effort to argue that all politicians are untrustworthy, including themselves. And I have yet to encounter an anarchist politician. I clicked through the link to see what the cited evidence was for this dubious assertion, and found a paragraph in a book about Newt Gingrich that says, in the opinion of the author, Gingrich "won control of the house by eroding public faith in institutions". No evidence is offered there either. So in the span of one paragraph this author manages to make wild and dubious assertions without any meaningful evidence beyond citing "those who study" i.e. people exactly like himself. At this point, self-proclaimed experts have a long string of high profile failures under their belt. Most recently, predicting the UK economy would enter recession after a vote to leave the EU which turned out to be the opposite of what really happened. Instead of looking in the mirror and asking why trust in academic expertise is declining, he chooses to blame other people. And so the downward spiral continues.