Hey there, and welcome to Revise and Resubmit. You’re listening to our Weekend Book Review episode, where we crack open books that shake the walls of what we think we know, and then ask—what’s behind them?
Today’s read is as provocative as it is timely. It’s called "The Weaponization of Expertise", written by Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson, and published by The MIT Press in March 2025. This book doesn’t gently suggest we rethink our blind trust in experts—it holds a mirror up to the machinery of elite knowledge and asks: when did doubt become dangerous?
Now, the authors are no outsiders throwing stones from the sidelines. Jacob Hale Russell is an Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, and Dennis Patterson holds appointments on both sides of the Atlantic—as a Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers and a Professor of Legal Philosophy at Surrey Law School in the UK. These are scholars who understand the architecture of legal and institutional authority from the inside. And they’re not calling for chaos. They’re calling for humility.
Using the COVID-19 pandemic as their core case, Russell and Patterson show how expert certainty—real or rehearsed—can backfire, breeding the very distrust it's meant to prevent. When science becomes dogma, when policy hardens into preaching, when debate is dismissed rather than welcomed—what happens to the soul of democratic decision-making?
So here’s my question: if the cure for misinformation lies in better trust, not just better facts, then how do we begin to rebuild that trust from the top and the bottom?
A big thank you to Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson for this much-needed reality check, and to The MIT Press for bringing it into the conversation.
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Until next time, keep thinking deeply and asking boldly.
Reference
Russell, J. H., & Patterson, D. (2025). The Weaponization of Expertise. MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049597/the-weaponization-of-expertise/
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