I believe you are wrong in saying that scientists aren't idiots: they make colossal errors, obvious ones, all the time! Frankly, I think most successful (in terms of adulation and $$$) scientists are ones who learned how to play the games scientists play, and publish known incorrect work, or unknowingly publish overly strong estimates of their confidence, because they've mastered the incentive system, not because they're not idiots.
I see very little true humility amongst scientists- nearly every successful one I've met was aggresively egotistical.
That said, after another 10-15 years of being a SWE, I've come to the conclusion most SWEs are idiots, too- too focused on clever algorithms and microoptimizations.
As an extreme, let us suppose that we know that there are 6 sources of noise spread out over the x-axis, and that the power of the noise will decrease x units away from each source. In that case, you might suspect that noise function needs a 12th order polynomial to fit the undulation pattern, just to get the necessary number of humps.
The general population are idiots. The amount of scientists studying is huge compared to 40 years ago. It has to be full of idiots.
We are not talking mistakes. We are talking fundamental structural flaws. The fact people in the scientific community defend themselves with rhetoric show they are idiots.
If scientists weren't such idiots they would attack the tech community and how useless it is. But it's scientists who support the AI lies for instance. They are a big part of the problem in tech.
I guarantee you that scientists are as smart and capable as the best of the non-scientist HN population, and were the story roles reversed, that scientists on the whole would be more humble about the limits of their knowledge about programming practice and design, etc. They would not revel in the "idiocy" of your bugs, security lapses, or petty spy-based mobile apps. Well maybe the last.
Have some humility. Stop building up fragile egos by tearing others down, pretending that you wouldn't make similar "mistakes" or produce designs with similar weaknesses or limits. Edit 1:Yes I'll defend my tribe. Each down-vote is a badge.