What’s an Expert, and Why? A comment on Christian Dayé, Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America

Christian Dayé’s new book, Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America (2020), recounts the development of a set of techniques of expertise developed in the United States during the Cold War, and (ostensively) enabling policy makers to make decisions based on likely social, political, and military developments. The techniques and approaches were, in hindsight, shocking in their ambition, their arrogance, and even their sloppiness. The account helps us to understand how scientific findings and expert “opinion” came to be conflated in post-war America, and may be part of the explanation of why scientific authority no longer equates to public authority.