Just this year I was told to attend a forum related to cybersecurity with an expert on a technology that I know very well. There’s no such thing as a PhD in it, but this dude had a resume that looked impressive, a bunch of certifications on his LinkedIn, and degrees from Notre Dame and MIT.

It was readily apparent within the first 30 minutes that the guy was pretty smart and knew more than the average bear, but was nowhere near the “expert” that he was touted. I’m confident that at least 5 of us in attendance could have answered most of the questions he got better than he did, and he gave outright wrong answers to a few of the more complex questions that he was asked.

He’s still out there on LI touting his expertise and certifications and experience, BTW. Fair or not, it made me much more skeptical of anyone who’s represented to me as an expert, given it was the first time I was in a position to actually know, firsthand, that what the expert was saying was wrong.