Something I’ve only recently figured out about experts: they know extremely specific information about their own field relatively well, but due to how our educational system works, they aren’t able to generalize this knowledge at all outside of its tiny application area. Thus, they can’t understand it or use it removed from that context and when they stray even a little from the very minute application area for their specific knowledge, what they claim (again, even in their own field) is often wildly incorrect or absurd.

That means that people like Zeynep Tufukci can beat the pants off of experts even in fields that she is not a true expert in, because outside of the restricted areas of very circumscribed scenarios the so-called expert is no better than anyone else — even in areas nominally in the expert’s own field.