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

Legit congrats to Eliza Dushku
https://ew.com/eliza-dushku-begins-mental-health-career-8-years-after-last-role-11762253

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum is gearing up for a new career in mental health counseling after receiving her master's degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month. Dushku, 44, recently took to Instagram to celebrate her accomplishment, sharing a video of herself walking across the stage to collect her diploma.

"Graduating with my master's degree (!!) feels like more than an achievement — it feels like a deep calling realized. True growth, energy, and passion — manifested," Dushku wrote in the caption of the post, which also featured photos of her in sporting a cap and gown alongside her husband, Peter Palandjian, their two sons, and her classmates. "After nearly a decade of inner work and building a new life, I'm so grateful for this moment in time."

Actor Dermot Mulroney is a trained cellist and has played cello on several film scores.

Geena Davis - excellent archer

It doesn't really count, but Marilu Henner has perfect memory recall. She remembers every line of her Taxi scripts, what she was wearing, what she ate on any given day. I watched an interview with her and it freaked me out and led me down an internet wormhole of people with photographic memory.

director todd field being one of the co-creators of big league chew is a fun example of this, yeah?

Harry Nilsson was in the first wave of people to be trained to work on computers. Like, regular people using them at work. He managed a department of computer workers at a bank.

Paul Winchell, ventriloquist, actor, and original voice of Tigger, Dick Dastardly and Gargamel, was also an inventor who co-patented the first artificial heart.

Geena Davis - excellent archer

― Cow_Art, Saturday, June 28, 2025 8:37 PM

She was on the US Olympic team many years ago, iirc.

No, she tried out but didn’t make the team. My dad is an archer and knew her from tournaments.

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/

― Ashley Pomeroy

eminem is apparently one of the world's greatest donkey kong players

It doesn't really count, but Marilu Henner has perfect memory recall. She remembers every line of her Taxi scripts, what she was wearing, what she ate on any given day. I watched an interview with her and it freaked me out and led me down an internet wormhole of people with photographic memory.

― Cow_Art

i don't have perfect memory recall, but awkwardly, pretty much the only thing i know about marilu henner was what she was doing the night of the moon landing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UidGrceG5Z8

i mean to be perfectly clear i don't remember the first time _i_ had sex. 1997? 1998? sometime around then.

i don't remember the last time i had sex either

Ahem, as a person with a crush on Marilu Henner, I did not expect this exciting turn. Pretty cute how she's twirling her hair, trying to figure out what to say!

I know I just mentioned him on another thread, but honestly, I am sort of blown away by the Renaissance Man nature if Terry Allen. Country singer, prolific visual artist, extremely well regarded professor… just wild to me that people like this exist sometimes.

the late brian mcbride being a seminal ambient musician AND an in demand high school debate coach is in that vein to me, too

Henner was on Marc Maron's WTF podcast a few years back - she talks about all this and discovering she had perfect recall. IIRC it's a good episode

Brian May was the first person that came to mind - I can’t imagine many people going back and earning their PhD 30 years after the fact, let alone in astrophysics!

I remember a couple of people being baffled when he was interviewed around the time of the Pluto flyby in the context of other scientists doing work with the results and I had to tell them "No, really, this is totally legit!"

similarly, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, and Milo Aukerman of The Descendents all have science PhDs

Mira Aroyo from Ladytron was also working on her PhD in genetics, but Wikipedia indicates that she didn't finish.

You all know about the Talulsh Gosh brains trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Fletcher and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Price_(artist)

Amelia Fletcher, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Rogers

Indie poppers born to rule over us.

Sophie Ward, whom I know primarily from Tom Scott media but has acted in some modestly high-profile stuff, completed a PhD in English and wrote a novel that was long-listed for the Booker Prize.

isn't Phil Collins like the foremost expert on the Battle of the Alamo? read that somewhere

He even found the basement

Makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where Keith Hernandez was a Civil War buff

I believe he held the largest private collection of Alamo artifacts and donated it to the museum. He's a total Alamo freak.

my college friend Chris Adrian is both a fiction writer and a Professor of Pediatrics at Columbia

Steves Albini and Davis both championship level poker players

― a welcome blast of fetid air (Matt #2), Saturday, June 21, 2025 7:23 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Steve Davis is also a DJ who is in a band with Kavus Torabi

Yakov Smirnoff got a doctorate in psychology a few years ago

alfred nobel was great at inventing dynamite but *terrible* at awarding peace prizes

Jennifer Tilly is kinda the OG when it comes to “poker as a second career”

The 'Actors' section here is promising.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number

Albert M Chan definitely in (PhD in electrical engineering, actor, writer, director, producer). Natalie Portman, hmm - ba in psychology. Colin Firth - nah.

Danica McKellar, AKA Winnie from the Wonder Years, has BS in math and an Erdos number of 4.

And a Bacon-Erdos number of 6!

Erdos-Bacon

The Peter Weller one Elvis Telecom mentioned is truly blowing my mind right now.

phil collins got conned by a dealer who sold him obvious forgeries. e.g. a bowie knife with the initials j.b. scratched onto it, which was authenticated by a psychic.
this book exerpt is great: https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/next-battle-of-alamo/

Erdos Bacon teaches you typing

similarly, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Greg Graffin of Bad Religion, and Milo Aukerman of The Descendents all have science PhDs

― jaymc, Monday, 30 June 2025 04:08 (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dexter Holland getting a PhD is just the start of what he’s contributed to mankind. If you told me that the singer of ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’ had a pivotal role in the development of an HIV and COVID-19 vaccine I’d never have believed it.

https://bsky.app/profile/gamerstavernshow.com/post/3lvdseznmz22u

Graffin's father had a PhD in English and spent most of his career at the university where I work. I never crossed paths with him but many colleagues did and said he had Bad Religion stickers and posters decorating his office.

Probably obvious, but Nabokov: novelist, translator, chess guy, and lepidopterist.

also introduced the crossword puzzle to Russians

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17341675-nabokrossvords

Kerouac knew enough about baseball to invent his own tabletop game...not sure how sophisticated it was, though. (Truman Capote chimes in on his writing skills.)

A licensed aircraft pilot,[22][38] Holland completed a 10-day solo flight around the world in November 2004.[38] He also enjoys surfing[citation needed] and collecting postage stamps from the Isle of Man.[39]

I'd always assumed Tom Lehrer was a nerd but thought he was a high school teacher or something and not writing prank papers at the NSA.

Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth and final wife, is the first (named) female published author in the English language.

phil collins got conned by a dealer who sold him obvious forgeries. e.g. a bowie knife with the initials j.b. scratched onto it, which was authenticated by a psychic.
this book exerpt is great: https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/next-battle-of-alamo/

Thank you for sharing, this was a great read! I especially want to shout out this one-of-a-kind gem of a sentence:

“I have a photo of this [exact] knife in London in ’72, from the London Daily Telegraph, [held] by the girlfriend of a dealer who is a known associate of the most notorious Bowie knife counterfeiter of all, a man named Dickie Washer.”

xp
quick google says Julian of Norwich was earlier

David Crosby and samurai swords

_AVC: What’s your favorite part about visiting Japan?

DC: Wow, where to start. The Japanese National Treasury Sword Museum.

AVC: What draws you to that place in particular?

DC: I’m a student of the blade technology that they developed back around the 1200s, 1300s, 1400s when they started making really amazing Samurai swords.

AVC: Do you collect any yourself?

DC: A little bit. I can’t afford to collect the really big ones.

http://www.avclub.com/article/david-crosby-answers-our-11-questions-232938🕸_

xp It seems that Julian's work was *published* later.