[ad_1] Experts hate to be wrong. When I first started writing about the public’s hostility toward expertise and established knowledge more than a decade ago, I predicted that any number of crises—including a pandemic—might be the moment that snaps the public back to its senses. I was wrong. I didn’t foresee how some citizens and their leaders would respond to the cycle of advances and setbacks in the scientific process and to the inevitable limitations of human experts. The coronavirus pandemic, in particular, would prove the perfect crucible for accelerating the decline of faith in experts. Paranoia and appeals to ignorance have long been part of the American political environment, but they were especially destructive at a time when the U.S. was riven by partisan hostility. The pandemic struck at multiple political and cultural weaknesses within the edifice of American life: A mysterious disease—from China, no less, a nation that typically serves as a source of American anxiety—forced citizens to rely on the media, including outlets that many of them already distrusted, for scattered pieces …