The Theory of Mediocrity

I've been working on this post for almost a month now and suffering from severe writer's block.

It seems like every few months some politician or pundit starts ranting about science that they clearly don't entirely understand. The outcome tends to range from humorous to downright terrifying. Take, for instance, the "series of tubes" incident from a couple years ago. It was relatively painless and everyone had a few laughs at the 84 year old senator's expense. (Ironically the series of tubes analogy is actually a fairly good, if overly simplistic, one.) But Senator Stevens clearly had no idea what he was talking so vehemently about. That's a dangerous situation with a relatively simple solution. We need to learn to trust scientists again.

I don't know when we stopped trusting scientists, but (as I often do) I blame the 80's. More accurately, I blame Reagan. Sure, it probably isn't his fault, but the culture that decided to elect an actor over a navy man who did his post-grad work in nuclear engineering has clearly been convinced that scientists are not to be trusted. Since then, and for as long as I've been alive, it's been an ongoing discussion of elitist attitudes.

I actually had someone ask me the other day why I should trust the experts on a topic over someone with a business degree. He called me an elitist and accused me of looking down on business majors. He didn't seem to care that it was a question of constitutional law, and when I offered to defer to his expertise on business questions he thought it was all a big joke.

Let's face it, experts are not always right, but as a general rule they know a lot more than the general public does on their subject. That is, after all, why they are called experts. They've typically gone to school for many years on their subject, and generally worked in the field as well. They don't just walk in off the street, declare themselves experts, and start pontificating on the subject (well, not usually).

Don't misunderstand me however, I'm not saying experts should control everything. Scientists are not necessarily good leaders, those are two unrelated skills. A good leader however should trust his advisers. A good leader doesn't have to be the smartest person in the room, in fact a good leader only needs to be smart enough to surround himself with people who are smarter than him and then listen to them.

We, as a society, need to stop punishing elitists. We need to stop beating up the smart kids in elementary school. We need to start rewarding the best and brightest instead of just the ones with a good throwing arm or the ones who can hit a fastball. We need to stop giving jobs to people who look and sound like us and start giving them to the awkward people who can do the work twice as well. And finally, we need to stop electing the people who make good drinking buddies and start electing the people who can outsmart us all.