I suppose what concerns me most are the real world examples of experts who fail to recognize the difficulty in becoming (rather than acting like) an expert in another field. The punditry that ensues is often very disturbing to me... and to those in the field the expert plops himself into.

Nevertheless, the way some people can recognize the 'bad to go pundit in someone else's tough discipline' angle in fiction but not in real life strikes me as odd. Willfully blind, or perhaps as some of you have said, they just identify variably with whichever is presented as the good route to take (overcoming entrenched graybeards with one great inspiration pulled out of their left elbow, or overcoming complex difficult subject matter with years of study). I don't see most such readers thinking that with no training they can pick up a sword in real life and do well with it - that point has been hammered home tons in fiction. Why do they think they can just jump into sociology, physics, political science, evolutionary biology, and astronomy?