Actually, Bill, I study, teach and write about scholary communication. By virtue of my professional training, I qualified to judge the credentials of a "scholar" and advise on or against anyone consulting them.
Those four little letters after my name say so: MLIS. My academic appointments have been based on my ability to judge authors and sources.
I don't need a PhD in mammilian biology to smell a dog turd under my shoe -- a simple internet search and a survey of the sources suffices for me, but then again, I am not so gullible as some or awed by any title under the sun -- some of the biggest morons I have ever met have the most prestigious degrees in the world, but at least they came by them through sweat and years of toil and hundreds of thousand pages read and digested, not from an unaccredited diploma mill that caters from a select group of self-selected cohorts and then cite the guys who gave them their soi-disant credentials and publish in the two or three "journals" that cater to the same crowd.
I actually parsed an article from the Insane Creation Posse or whatever it is out of Texas and shall find it and reveal the results of the sourcing to a "candid world" as Jefferson said.