I would agree with and extend your remarks that it takes a certain level of competence in a field to correctly evaluate someone at a higher level in the field,

I would agree with and extend your remarks that it takes a certain level of competence in a field to correctly evaluate someone at a higher level in the field, and as the level of the evaluated person increases, the required level of the evaluator increases. Someone with a BS in physics level of knowledge or maybe grad degree can possibly evaluate Feynman vs Einstein as per the debate in the comments today. However, I suspect most people can't do a useful evaluation of those two. There are obvious HN on topic analogies with coding, system design, database design, network design.