I know of someone who published a book on Golang in 2010. The rating of that book is sitting in the 3s out of 5 stars last I checked 6 years ago. Is he an expert at Go? Not in my most humblest opinion, is the content of the book good? Also a no in my honest, must charitable view. How far did he get with showing people how to program with Go? About as far as you'd get in 2 hours on the golang docs even considering a very poorly skilled college student doing the exercises. There's maybe 170 pages in the book. I'm almost certain the book has not reached even 200 sales at the highest.

Is he really considered an expert to you, solely because of the publishing of a book? Here it is by the way: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Programming-John-P-Baugh/dp/145363...

I know that's not necessarily your view, but this is the standard we are working with

Chat GPT write me a book on the following topic. Instant expert, just add hot water.

It's been years now that AI can write books. Writing a book nowadays doesn't mean anything. "Doing your own research" is laughed at now, but this is actually used to be the job of journalists to do that. That doesn't mean not using experts to help understand complex subjects. But what journos like the NYT is fishing experts and using them as a "proof" is simply arguing from a conclusion.

> "Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class.

In the US (which this person is).

In most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the majority of full-time academics are "lecturers" (or even "senior lecturers"), expected to do both teaching and research, and a PhD is usually required (but exceptions have occasionally been made). An "adjunct/visiting/associate/guest lecturer" is a different thing, that's generally a part-time or even honorary position, and there are no expectations about research output.

Part of this is because Americans inflated the title of professor to the point of making almost every full-time/permanent academic one, whereas in the UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there. (For most fields–medicine has a lot more professors, but clinical professor is generally a giveaway they spend the majority of their time treating patients, and teaching and research is a side-gig.)

Although–I wonder if everyone in the US uses the terminology in the same way. It is not unheard of for some university out there to just do something weird which others don't. Not saying that's true in this person's case, but not impossible.