The Rejected Expert and the Knowledge's Half-Blood

Responding to Charles Lassiter's "Reading the Signs: From Dyadic to Triadic Views for Identifying Experts," this reply develops a sociological account of why experts are recognised or rejected. Building on Lassiter's use of Peircean triadic semiotics and the cultural embedding of expert recognition, it argues that identifying an expert is not merely the assessment of a trustworthy source but an interpretive act shaped by subcultural identity. It introduces the figure of the Knowledge's Half-Blood -- the non-producer who nonetheless wields knowledge -- to explain how expert authority is contested in contemporary democracies, extending the author's earlier work on the crisis of competence toward a non-ideal, culturally situated social epistemology.