Reputation-inflation as a Way of Hiding an Absence of Merit

If a given professor is seen as competent, that is probably because he is competent. If a given professor is seen as a sage or guru, that is because he is completely incompetent, in a way that bespeaks wide-spread corruption and fraud on the part of the discipline in question, in consequence of which the instruments of discipline-internal propaganda are in over-drive cover-up mode.