a question about scholarly ethics

A question occurred to me about scholarly ethics.

As I am neither a scholar nor an ethicist, this question may
have no validity, but I'm just curious.

It seems to me that a scholar has certain obligations when
communicating to the public. One of them would be to inform the
audience when s/he is expressing an opinion outside of the area
of scholarly expertise.

To take a manufactured example, if a specialist in the history
of the American Revolution wrote an article on the Civil War, there
ought to be a disclaimer something like this: "I'm an expert on the
American Revolution, not on the Civil War, so my opinions may not
reflect the best of current opinion on this topic."

What do you folks think?


--
---Tom S. <http://talkreason.org/articles/chickegg.cfm>
"It is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so
much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer. ... The evidences ... of
Natural Theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under
limitations..." John Stuart Mill, "Theism", Part II

.

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