(Apologies to John Hodgman for swiping his nifty title.)
There has been some discussion in these parts about just who ought to be allowed to talk about scientific issues of various sorts, and just what kind of authority we ought to grant such talk. It’s well and good to say that a journalism major who never quite finished his degree is less of an authority on matters cosmological than a NASA scientist, but what should we say about engineers or medical doctors with “concerns” about evolutionary theory? What about the property manager who has done a lot of reading? How important is all that specialization research scientists do? To some extent, doesn’t all science follow the same rules, thus equipping any scientist to weigh in intelligently about it?
Rather than give you a general answer to that question, I thought it best to lay out the competence I personally am comfortable claiming, in my capacity as a trained scientist.