Deference to authority is a funny thing eh? I find that in life, and especially in running my business, I pretty frequently lock horns with people who disagree with me on account of a seemingly differing opinion of some other Experienced Person(R). It's like, such and such person has lots of experience in the industry, therefore they know the answer to this specific question better than you do, regardless of anything. When I hear these appeals to authority I always think that if I were actually sitting across the table from this Very Smart Person--as opposed to the person citing them--and they were willing to listen, we would probably end up in agreement. Like you say, the person might be WAY smarter than me in general, but... LOOK AT THE FUCKING DATA.
There's a reason smart people are good at solving problems, and it's not because they always defer to what other people 'know' to be true!
So does pcwalton. Ever heard of https://www.rust-lang.org/ ?