For an argument that is espousing the benefits of empathy, your condescending tone is very off-putting. You also use a straw-man argument - there is a differenc

For an argument that is espousing the benefits of empathy, your condescending tone is very off-putting. You also use a straw-man argument - there is a difference between trusting professors more than lay people and believing that scholarly education grants you "the Always Right card". I also don't believe that "as long as you're very intelligent and highly educated, you're probably right on any arbitrary topic, and your opinions trump those of less intelligent and/or less educated people regardless of the relative degrees of experience involved on that topic". That is an obvious straw man. At the same time, I don't think working at Wendy's somehow constitutes the necessary experience to understand humanity that working as a professor doesn't provide. Would a Wendy's employee be better able to cook a hamburger? Yes, but if I want economic advice on how to improve the lives of poor people I'm still going to trust an economist who studies the issues over a Wendy's employee. Would working a year as a Wendy's employee really help the economist better understand the economy? The fundamental point of the article - that scientists don't understand society because they are somehow different and privileged - is wrong at best and dangerously anti-intellectual at worst.