The original question was are academics the smartest people in the room. I said if you define "smartest" as knowing the most about a given subject, the answer is "no", unless that is the subject that they studied.

If you are referring to physicians, the answer is also no unless it relates to an area they have studied.

I never suggested I was the smartest person in the room, though there are areas where I probably will have more experience than other people in the room and so in those cases perhaps, I might be the "smartest person in the room" depending on who the other people are.

Thank you for your well wishes, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. You should remember that because someone disagrees with you does not mean you should verbally attack them or try to insult them or any of the other behaviors you have exhibited on this thread.

If you can make an argument, that an academic is "always" the smartest person in the room, then make the argument, but everything else you have said is largely off topic.

As for thousands of hours, as my PhD professor says, he has spent thousand of hours studying the history of the fall of Rome and knows far more than most people on the subject. But his intense study of this salient event in history has left far less time to study other things.

As someone who ran a company with over 40,000 employees, you become successful by not pretending to be the smartest person in the room but finding that person among a group and relying on his thoughts and knowing that "the person" differs depending on the situation.