[vikramkr]

Yeah - I wouldn't have said it so strongly but I fundamentally agree that we shouldn't excuse beliefs based on perceptions of people's intelligence. If their claim is incorrect the claim is what stands on it's own, it doesn't matter who said it. The reason that experience and intelligence matter is because they allow people putting forward those claims to make stronger arguments or know what arguments to make/experiments to run to validate the claim. Intelligence and experience can hell you make better claims, but claims shouldn't be given any more weight or validity because they come from someone with experience or a high score in some (probably somewhat arbitrary and highly subjective) score of experience - that's the core principle of meritocracy in my opinion.