Some careers and skills not only require books smarts but actual research, months of in the field time with more research and to be published and peer reviewed plus board certified by your state. No one is going to let a “self taught” geologist touch a 50 let alone 100 million dollar hole in the ground. Post graduate is entry level at the true sciences. Most senior scientists have multiple master’s if not multiple PhDs. Same for exploration no one is going to risk hundreds of millions on someone who doesn’t have a pedigree behind them. Even with pedigree you still have to mentor under a staff senior or higher geo before you ever land your own well let alone wildcat one. Real science still requires years and I mean 12+ of specific knowledge,experience and pedigree.
Sounds like Nakamura disproves your theory...
I was in a company that was technically oriented and had tons of PhD’s in the hard sciences. Even among them there was a wide spectrum of competence. From a physicist who had worked on every underground nuke test since 1960 and loved learning new things no matter how small to a boasting EE from some “Ecole” in Switzerland who plugged a power strip into itself and chewed out the IT guy when his computer didn’t work.
There’s a big diffference between 15 years of experience and 1 year of experience 15 times.
Spoken like Ph.D. Fauci.