Excellence should be able to demonstrate itself without appeals to authority or qualifications.

Let those who claim to have authority or expertise demonstrate it by their teaching.

The apostle Paul demonstrated the standard:

“… but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

2Corinthians 4:2.

He was following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ Who cut through the insipid academia of the scribes’ quoting more ancient scribes. Jesus went straight to the exegesis of Scripture. This astonished His audience and at the end of His Sermon on the Mount we read: “And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine, because He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” Mat 7:28-29.

In this era of social media, people need to learn to discuss and debate, based upon the truth as they understand it, with a readiness to change their mind.

Freeman Dyson: “The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs.”  This is rather similar to my own aphorism: “Intelligent people can be very prejudiced, because they think they can see the answer better than others.”  Such are too intelligent for their own good.