In 1931, a German publisher released a book titled “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein,” in which the great physicist’s fellow experts argued against his theory of relativity.
“Why 100?” Albert Einstein reputedly responded. “If I were wrong, one would be enough.”
I thought of this the other day when more than 100 professors of international law signed a letter denouncing President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy, claiming that his declared plans to strike the regime’s critical infrastructure, like power plants and bridges, might be considered war crimes.
Well! One hundred professors of international law, experts all.
Yet Trump on Monday dismissed their studied objections out of hand.
“No, not at all — no, no,” he said, adding that the Iranian people “want us to keep bombing . . . because their life is in much greater danger” from the regime.
“Allowing a sick country with demented leadership to have a nuclear weapon, that’s a war crime,” he declared.
Why won’t Trump listen to the experts?
A better question is, why in God’s name would he?
I mean, the track record of the world’s “experts” hasn’t been sterling lately.
Not long ago, over 100 “leading economists” predicted that if President Javier Milei of Argentina implemented his economic policies, national “devastation” would follow.
According to the letter they signed, Milei’s proposals were “a radical departure from traditional economic thinking,” one “rooted in laissez-faire economics” and “fraught with risks . . . potentially very harmful for the Argentine economy.”
The Argentine public wisely chose to ignore the 100 economists.
Today, inflation has fallen dramatically — from a peak of over 211% in 2023 to around 32% annually by early 2026 (with monthly rates now hovering near 2.9%).
The poverty rate dropped sharply, government spending cuts produced a fiscal surplus, and the central bank is accumulating reserves.
Analysts now project up to 4% GDP growth for 2026 overall, driven by exports, agriculture, energy and mining.
Perhaps I missed it, but the letter-writers who predicted doom have not admitted their error.
Being an “expert” means never having to say you’re sorry.
We saw that in spades during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were ordered to “follow the science” and abide by wildly disruptive recommendations that turned out to have precious little in the way of science behind them — like six-foot distancing, cloth or paper surgical masks, one-way lanes in grocery stores and of course the lockdowns themselves.
Keeping kids out of school did lasting harm that’s still reverberating, and the economy took a brutal hit.
And in a huge blow to their credibility, those same scolds took a 180-degree turn to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Suddenly the lockdown rules evaporated, and it was OK for tens of thousands to gather unmasked to protest — because, they told us, racism is a public-health crisis, too.
Then there were the 51 intelligence “experts” (what, they couldn’t find 100?) who called the Hunter Biden laptop story originally reported by The Post a Russian hoax.
It was no such thing, but on the word of those experts, news media blacked the story out until after the 2020 election, helping to propel the senescent Joe Biden to the White House.
In these degenerate times, it’s probably easier than ever to get 100 professors to sign on to practically any statement, so long as it supports the left’s preferred narrative.
The problem for them is that more and more of us are tuning their statements out, because experience has taught us to be wary of the experts’ politically motivated hysteria.
I suspect the same will happen with the international law professors’ letter.
As usual, they’re reacting viscerally to Trump’s heated rhetoric — but while his language gets a lot of attention, it’s not a crime.
And while deliberately targeting civilians themselves is a war crime under international law, striking civilian infrastructure that also has military uses is decidedly not.
In fact, the destruction of such dual-use infrastructure, like bridges and power plants, has played a part in every major conflict in the past century.
It’s a clear legal distinction that anti-Trump commentators have deliberately muddled.
These days, of course, appeals to “international law” and talk of “war crimes” seem to come up almost exclusively in the context of actions the United States or Israel take — particularly actions that prove effective.
You can still find “experts” to say such things.
But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find people interested in listening.
Which is exactly what the “experts” deserve for blowing their credibility over politics, again and again.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.
