The true expert knows more than you do.

The dentist knows whether you need a filling. You can’t possibly know what the shadow she’s showing you on the X-ray means. Not without years of specialized training, anyway.

But when the expert acts in bad faith—when the dentist gives you unnecessary dental work that breaks things enough another dentist has to fix it—that trust is broken. And it’s difficult to rebuild.

For many, it destroys trust in all experts. And we see where that gets us: conspiracy theories, denialism, and heterodoxy.

We must have faith in our experts, but they can’t exploit it. Not without serious social consequences.