OPINION: Expert voices are a resource we should all utilize

I believe that if there were ever a grand conspiracy to dupe the American people, Anthony Fauci would be on his couch, finding out from CNN like the rest of us. On July 29th, former Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Fauci appeared before the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, and Governmental Affairs Committee to answer questions about his role in the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus. He invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, as PBS counted. A week later, the committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress. The hearing largely centered around allegations that Fauci concealed information about the origins of COVID-19, and mishandled government research into coronaviruses. Fauci has denied wrongdoing, while Republicans have continued to press the possibility that the virus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. I am keen to blame most things on post-pandemic psychosis, but I fear we got here on pure American grit and determination. After all, what is more American than deciding that if something is complicated, we should simply go home and figure it out on our own? We have decided that a responsible citizen should be capable of researching everything for themselves, whether or not they are equipped to understand what they find. I call this phenomenon 'at-home expert creep.' It is the belief that with enough Googling, reading, and common sense, we can make ourselves experts in fields that other people spend years studying. As an adult, it is a good instinct to believe that you have a responsibility to be involved in the care of your health, the definition of your politics, and the movements of the world around you. But there is a difference between being informed and being an expert. I am a philosophy major, which means I spend a considerable amount of time reading and arguing over ancient texts. Consequently, nobody would expect me to be particularly qualified to interpret dense scientific research, and they shouldn't! Fauci is held in contempt for possibly hiding 'valuable' information about the origins of COVID. During election seasons, senators have every reason to play into the suspicions of the public, even when those suspicions have very little basis. I suspect the logic goes something like this: China is bad, Chinese people are very smart, Wuhan has a laboratory that studies coronaviruses, and COVID appeared in Wuhan. Therefore, something more sinister must have happened. The problem is not that the experts have failed to give us answers. They have, time and time again. The problem is that bias is masquerading as common sense. Politics make some answers easier to believe than others, even when the plain facts are sitting in front of us. We cannot know everything, and there is nothing wrong with depending on the people around us who do. The answer is not blind trust in experts, either. We should tighten the accountability of professionals through licensing, boards, and professional standards. Experts themselves also need to stop cheapening their credentials by turning gossip, speculation, or personal opinions into authoritative-sounding content online. A medical professional does not become an expert on everything simply because they are a doctor. We do not need to know everything. We need to know who knows what, what it is they claim to know, and what to do when they are wrong.