There are plenty of brilliant surgeons that I would not trust for a second with a question about marine biology or politics or philosophy or classic literature or any other intellectual pursuit.
I would not trust the world’s greatest heart surgeon to operate on my brain. The same thing applies to lawyers. Some lawyer who specializes in copyright law knows jack shit about inheritance and handling an estate. Professors are hyperfocused on their particular field, and depending on how much of a crank they are or how much of an ego they have, completely tunnelvision on their own idiosyncratic understanding of the field even as the field, headed by younger professors with less of an ego, move on.
I would not trust the world’s greatest heart surgeon to operate on my brain. The same thing applies to lawyers. Some lawyer who specializes in copyright law knows jack shit about inheritance and handling an estate. Professors are hyperfocused on their particular field, and depending on how much of a crank they are or how much of an ego they have, completely tunnelvision on their own idiosyncratic understanding of the field even as the field, headed by younger professors with less of an ego, move on.