@deonandan.bsky.social:
At least 25% of Americans believe stupider shit than this. What does belief have to do with anything?
@mark-ungrin.bsky.social:
Essential new paper: “Toxic experts in longevity business: A multilevel relational framing of emergence”
Draws on multiple examples, including the way medical pseudoexperts botched the pandemic.
The concept of “toxic experts” is extremely useful for understanding the attack on science happening around the world.
They’re most prominent in the US right now, but behind the scenes in Canada and elsewhere too, enabled by pseudoscientific systems that grant them excessive authority in medicine.
Toxic experts in longevity business: A multilevel relational framing of emergence by Aybike Mergen, Mustafa F Özbilgin, Çagla Güven, Cihat Erbil and Trisha Greenhalgh, Feb 11, 2026, Sage Journals
https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084251379172
Abstract
In this paper, we introduce and theorize the concept of toxic experts as individuals who, by virtue of their perceived or actual expertise, systematically engage in behaviors characterized by professional and intellectual vices. Despite maintaining an appearance of legitimacy, toxic experts exploit public trust by disseminating unsubstantiated, misleading, or harmful claims for personal and commercial gain. Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework, we integrate diverse insights to explain how toxic expertise emerges and persists. Specifically, we combine ethical and epistemic perspectives that distinguish genuine expertise from opportunistic misrepresentation. We analyze how social and institutional recognition shapes expert authority. Then we examine how structural transformations of work erode professional integrity and identify cognitive mechanisms that sustain trust in unverified claims. Using the case of the longevity biotechnology business, we develop a multilevel relational theoretical framework that identifies: (i) the historical and socio-cultural preconditions that enable toxic experts to emerge, (ii) the social and cognitive processes through which they gain and maintain legitimacy, and (iii) prevention strategies centered on cascaded accountability reforms. Our contextualized perspective challenges the depiction of toxic experts as isolated deviant individuals, revealing them instead as products of broader social, institutional, and ideological conditions. We argue that mitigating their influence requires cascaded regulatory interventions at societal and institutional levels to restore public trust and prevent toxic outcomes.
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To illustrate how this definition behaves in boundary conditions, consider the following four examples. First, the case of Andrew Wakefield, who published a now-discredited study linking vaccines to autism, exemplifies the transition from error to toxicity. Initially, his work is a potential scientific finding. However, his persistence in promoting anti-vaccine views despite overwhelming contrary evidence and the revelation of ethical breaches in his research pushed him into the realm of toxic expertise (Deer, 2020; Menzin, 2025; Tait, 2025). His study was retracted by The Lancet (Davidson, 2017), and he was struck off the UK medical register by the General Medical Council for serious professional misconduct (Boseley, 2018). His prominence surged during Donald Trump’s presidency, where anti-establishment rhetoric amplified his influence (Bristow and Robinson, 2018), contributing to a dangerous decline in vaccination rates (Kata, 2010).
Conversely, the second example is Barry Marshall and Robin Warren’s proposal that bacteria cause stomach ulcers. They identified the link between H. pylori bacteria and ulcers, facing criticism due to the prevailing medical consensus that bacteria could not survive in the stomach. It took nearly a decade for the medical community to accept the results, eventually leading to a Nobel Prize (Sample, 2005). This example demonstrates how challenging established paradigms can be mistaken for toxic expertise. Initially dismissed by the medical community, their persistence in the face of skepticism was ultimately vindicated, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between toxic behavior and legitimate scientific innovation (Altman, 2005).
Third, in the case of COVID-19, Greenhalgh et al. (2021) demonstrate that the exclusion and dismissal of heterodox scientists in the UK led to flawed health policies that prioritized randomized clinical trials over evidence of airborne transmission from physicists and engineers. This highlights how orthodox experts can become toxic when they reject interdisciplinarity due to hubris and overconfidence (Maclean et al., 2021). Fourth, in financial expertise, figures like Bernie Madoff illustrate how perceived expertise can secure personal gain through manipulation. Madoff’s reputation as a financial expert allowed him to perpetrate a massive Ponzi scheme, demonstrating how the gap between perceived and actual expertise can be exploited by toxic experts (Hayes, 2024). These examples underscore the nature of toxic expertise and the importance of considering both the actions of the expert and the broader context in which they operate. By framing toxic expertise through the lens of Aristotelian virtues and vices, our conceptualization provides an understanding of the ethical dimensions of expert behavior across various fields and contexts.
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Discussion
In this paper, we aimed to advance the understanding of toxic experts as a socio-politically constituted relational phenomenon by moving beyond isolated narratives of individual deviance, exemplified through the case of the longevity biotechnology business. We defined the concept of toxic experts by drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics, which locates toxicity as practices and behaviors in deficit or excess of expert virtues with adverse impact. To present a comprehensive view of toxic experts, we formulated a multilevel framework that illuminates the complex interplay between macro-structural conditions and micro-level processes in the emergence and perpetuation of toxic expertise. With this framework, we capture the complex interplay between systemic forces and individual actions and also illuminate the cascaded failures of accountability that enable the emergence and perpetuation of toxic experts.
Our analysis, grounded in a critical social science paradigm, enables us to explore the dialogical interaction between macro-level structures and micro-level behaviors. This approach provides a perspective on the relational emergence of toxic experts, challenging reductive views that solely emphasize individual moral duty. Our study contributes to a more contextualized and systemic understanding of toxic experts, emphasizing the need for multilevel interventions to address this pressing issue in professional fields.
We examine how the neoliberal reconfiguration of healthcare systems has created fertile ground for toxic experts and fundamentally reshaped the epistemic and ethical foundations of medical expertise, particularly in emerging fields like longevity biotechnology. This ideological shift, characterized by the marketization of healthcare and the erosion of collective accountability, has fundamentally altered the landscape of biomedical expertise. Within this paradigm, the commodification of expertise supplants its ethical imperatives, precipitating a profound shift in the axiological foundations of biomedical praxis.
As such, we augment extant scholarly discourse on the ontology of expertise in contemporary society (Nichols, 2017; Reed, 2018) by highlighting the paradoxical consequences of neoliberal policies on expert power and influence. While such policies aim to enhance efficiency and innovation, they subvert the epistemological and ethical foundations underpinning legitimate expertise. This inherent contradiction is emblematic of the broader dialectical tensions within neoliberal ideology, echoing critiques from scholars such as Harvey (2005) and Coburn (2000).
Conclusion
This paper makes several key contributions. In line with our research questions, we first offer a conceptual definition of toxic experts that captures social constructions of expertise and their adverse consequences. By offering a theoretically grounded, multilevel framework for understanding the emergence of toxic experts, we extend the theory of toxic experts by illuminating the complex interplay of social, institutional, and cognitive factors that lead to their emergence. Our cascaded accountability approach moves beyond individualized solutions to systemic and institutional reforms. We offer a more nuanced understanding of expertise and accountability in contemporary organizations and societies, challenging us to rethink how we validate and govern expert knowledge in an era of eroding trust and institutional flux.
Our paper opens up several avenues for future research. The proposed framework could be studied across various professional contexts, exploring how different institutional arrangements and cultural settings can shape the emergence and influence of toxic experts. Comparative analyses across different fields could illuminate sector-specific dynamics and patterns. Longitudinal studies could investigate the long-term effects of toxic experts on public trust and scientific authority, informing policy interventions. Theoretically, future work could further explore the dialectical relationship between expert toxicity and neoliberal governance regimes, building on our insights to develop a more comprehensive theory of mitigation in late capitalism. Additionally, the concept of cascaded accountability could be extended and refined, offering a new paradigm for understanding governance in multilevel systems.
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@creddingvye.bsky.social:
Thank you for this! Could be considered within a framework of Institutional Courage (Freyd et al. ) as a structural way to combat institutional betrayal which is what we are seeing/ living through now in US
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