Nobel Disease (tendency of experts in one field to become confident bozos in another) and its Opposite (people you don't expect to have genuine chops in something they're not famous for)

It feels like we're constantly beset by hucksters who have parlayed success (sometimes impressive and duly earned, oftentimes gross) in one area into an expanding portfolio of loud crank bullshit, but what about people who are public superstars in one area but have managed to keep a low profile about their true secret talents?

James Watson would be an obvious example.

William Shockley is the ultra example of this. He won a shared Nobel for the development of the transistor. He later published a pseudo-scientific book to "prove" that north Europeans are intellectually superior to Blacks and other inferior races.

Who would be the Clark Kents to these Lex Luthors?

people who are public superstars in one area but have managed to keep a low profile about their true secret talents?

Hedy Lamarr

Les Paul maybe? Though the two fields are hardly poles apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7KqMXStHC0

re: Hedy Lamarr -- it's funny she gets pegged for being a spy, but no one suspects... Julia Child: Agent of OSS!

Josephine Baker was also an allied spy. And on the other side of the coin there's Coco Chanel I guess.

Does Phil Collins, Alamo expert fit here?

steven pinker. nate silver.

not low-key but apparently james cameron really is an expert re: submersibles

If we're talking linguists who make ill-advised forays into political commentary, I would add John McWhorter.

(And the positive example would be Chomsky of course)

In the actors who you didn't expect to have the expertise of the characters they played dept...
Here's Nick Offerman building a canoe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8cEZmOChug

Not sure which this is but I remember when cable news kept bringing Kevin Costner on as an expert on cleaning up oil spills.

And then there’s Terrence Howard, math genius.

I was genuinely surprised by Molly Ringwald’s second career as a French translator

Steves Albini and Davis both championship level poker players

Peter Weller: Robocop, Buckaroo Banzai, and PhD art historian who just published a book on Leon Battista Alberti

Linus Pauling on vitamin C.

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and the defense dept.

I remember many years ago being surprised to find out that Lance Henriksen, star of Millennium two-two and lots of exploitation films, is or was a decently talented potter. He used to have a website, sadly no longer online. It's mentioned in this thread from Home Theatre Forum dated 2002, but irritatingly they've removed the actual link.

In the late 1970s Lou Reed was apparently a credible pinball player:
https://damienlove.com/writing/im-set-free-the-making-of-lou-reeds-take-no-prisoners-an-oral-history/

Which brought me to An die Kulturwelt!, "a proclamation by 93 prominent Germans supporting Germany in the start of World War I" released in October 1914, including several Nobel prizewinners albeit that the Nobel prizes were probably a lot less wishy-washy back then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Ninety-Three

Among the names is, amusingly, Engelbert Humperdinck. The real Engelbert Humperdinck. And Gerhart Hauptmann, winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize for Literature, and later part of the NSDAP's Gottbegnadeten list of top cultural figures who should be preserved at all costs.

Does DJ Harvey make surfboards or does he just sell them?

I guess one can have "chops" in theology as in any practice: Canadian 80s/90s soft-rocker Paul Janz became "Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology and Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London",

Having spent a lot of time around a number of people with PhDs in the sciences last week... this thread is exactly what I need

The wikipedia page on this has some notable examples, and a rather astute quote from Milton Friedman of all people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

Something that amplifies the impact of Nobel Disease, the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Sounds a bit like Crichton justifying his climate-change skepticism.

Crichton is an interesting case because he started out in medicine, became a thriller/science fiction writer, and just warped into a bitter climate change denier and kept elevating his misogyny