On 11/4/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote: It may be worth pointing out that Phil is an academic expert in the area in question, so his opinion is actually worth more on the particular subject.
Academic experts are uniquely qualified to judge the relative notability of subjects within their area of expertise. They are also, in general, probably not the people we would want to have judging the overall notability of their entire area of expertise. (I do not think I have ever known an academic whose estimation of his or her own field's importance was not substantially higher than the outside world's estimation of the same.) We should ask carefully which is occurring in any "expert judgement" scenario.