[yorwba]

> I've also had many small edits on technical subjects (particle physics and supersymmetry) reversed by people who were self-professedly not experts,

I'm all for having experts determine the notation to be used in their respective fields...

> in his ornithology book, the generic term is always the female term, so "Truthuhn" (with u). That sounds like "turkeychicken" to the average German.

... but that also means deferring to ornithologists on the question of what birds are called, instead of relying on your lay understanding based on eating turkey meat. If chickens were named after their meat, they might be called "Hähnchen". But of course chickens are mostly kept for their eggs, so we end up with the opposite situation where the average person treats neuter "Huhn" as synonymous with female "Henne".