Many skills in this world are viewed as black and white. The thinking seems to go: If you know Excel, surely you can do this data mining project. Heaven forbid that someone knows Access, suddenly they become general database experts. The worst are when people know SharePoint development and they are automatically cast as developers.
All skills exist on a spectrum. I’m really good at AutoCAD but that doesn’t mean you want me designing your building. But to some that don’t know anything about AutoCAD other than that it is used by architects to design buildings, anyone that uses it must be able to design buildings. The skill seems binary – you have it or you don’t.
This kind of thinking occurs in all of us around different topics. If you have no knowledge or understanding of a subject then anyone on the spectrum has such a huge amount of knowledge beyond you that they seem like an expert. But to someone with some knowledge of a topic, there is a vast difference in types of expertise.
Masters and Doctorate programs exist for this exact reason. The levels of nuance and specialization possible once you have a solid base in a subject become many. Specialists can be developed into areas that no one else would have even thought possible simply because someone sees an opportunity to expand knowledge.