Experts have spent years asking how to make people trust expertise again. Usually that means asking some version of: How do we get people to again believe what we’re telling them?
It’s an important question. But I think it obscures one that’s even more foundational:
Can they use what we’re telling them?
Do you know how to tell whether your expertise is usable by the people whose decisions or outcomes or behaviors you want to improve or influence?
If you respond to that question by saying, “I’m a researcher, not a consultant,” feel free to stop reading.
But if your inability to answer that question well bothers you, here are a few more questions to start out with:
How well can you describe those people you want to use your expertise? Those decisions or outcomes or behaviors?
Aim beyond mere category in your descriptions. What’s their job? Where do they live? To whom do they answer? What’s at stake in the decision or outcome or behavior change? What are the obstacles to that change? Do they even know that they might have the kind of option you’re offering them? If not, what would need to change?
If you don’t think answering these questions is important, how do you expect your expertise to be valuable to the people you intend it for? The people you want to trust you?
Now that you know who you’re trying to reach, you can ask if your expertise is usable by them. “Usable” forms a rubric:
Is it accessible? (And not just: Can they access it? But: Are they likely to?)
Is it readily understandable?
Is it applicable? To their discipline? Situation? Specific challenges? Values? Yes, their values.
Is it actionable? Does it acknowledge its uncertainties while still arriving at concrete recommendations or options? Or does it melt into a puddle of caveats and whataboutisms? Nevertheless, does the expert help me decide choose or decide what to do?
Finally: Is it timely? Does it arrive in time for them to use it? Or is it years after the apex of utility—well after the concrete of public opinion or bureaucratic response has been set? Because an imperfect answer today usually beats by anyone’s measure a definitive answer three years from now.
If your expertise is hard to use, hard to understand and/or hard to apply to a decision, you will today be much harder to trust, regardless of your credentials, rigor and facts.
Traditional expertise struggles to rebuild trust in part because it issues findings while the public and decision-makers need decisions.
Judgement can fill that gap. I define “judgement” here as an expert using what’s known—including what remains uncertain—to recommend what someone should do. It’s the fundamental skill and practice of the public expert.
But practicing judgement routinely requires that you deliver some things that conventional expert training frequently discourages:
Integrating evidence beyond your narrow speciality;
Interpreting incomplete evidence;
Deeply understanding the users of your judgement (including their values);
Making decisions under uncertainty; and
Saying in public, “Given what we know, I would do X.”
To win back trust, expertise can’t just produce and protect knowledge, even though that’s what the research system is still largely designed to do.
The public expert combines knowledge with judgement, often at the edge of uncertainty, in ways that specific people can and will use.
Your public value as an expert increasingly lies in helping people make good decisions. Especially when nobody knows the answer.