Yes, but very smart people are often hyperfocused on their own particular bellybutton lint like I said.
For someone whose whole job revolves around the quark structure of nuclei they may see it important enough to "correct" someone who only thinks of nuclei as protons and neutrons flying around each other in relative isolation like planets.
Add a dash or ten of Asperger's (we're talking about nuclear physicists here) and that's how you wind up with an expert "correcting" a non-expert about a casual fact which is 99.9% correct.
Thinking that the expert was too dumb to know that fact is probably the wrong interpretation.
Thinking that the expert was making a social/communication mistake is probably the right one.
For someone whose whole job revolves around the quark structure of nuclei they may see it important enough to "correct" someone who only thinks of nuclei as protons and neutrons flying around each other in relative isolation like planets.
Add a dash or ten of Asperger's (we're talking about nuclear physicists here) and that's how you wind up with an expert "correcting" a non-expert about a casual fact which is 99.9% correct.
Thinking that the expert was too dumb to know that fact is probably the wrong interpretation.
Thinking that the expert was making a social/communication mistake is probably the right one.