[split] Authority and the Appeal to it.

[RadioFM]

I don't have the authority to question her and neither does anyone else that isn't in her profession.

If anyone can now claim to be an expert in everything and dismiss everyone else's learning on the basis of their feelings, academia as we know it is really broken..

That's my point: You don't need authority to question someone, you need evidence.
You don't need to claim to be an expert when questioning someone, unless your arguments rely on simply being an authority on the matter.

Btw you should take East Asian Origin theory seriously then, no matter your feelings, because you probably don't have half the expertise and research years on the VMS that Professor Stolfi has. See where I'm going? Stolfi is an example of an authority who has both his hypotheses and claims (sometimes in fields he's knowledgeable in, like math) challenged time and time again on this forum, and that's good and healthy; sometimes he's proven wrong, other times he's proven right on some matters. Imagine if we were to just go "Oh well, he made the Crust-Mantle-Core model, who am I to say he's probably wrong on this point?" Because that's the kind of standard you're postulating but only selectively practising.