This is a letter to the editor from a weekly Canadian newsmagazine. It is a response to an article about 9/11 conspiracies, but I think the author's point is valid generally:
If you wonder what Dewdney is doing on the faculty of a Canadian University, it is because you are labouring under the common delusion that university professors are more intelligent than the general run of the population. In my 25 years on the University of Toronto faculty, I've come to conclude that the distribution of intelligence is identical to the general population. To wit, there are a lot of idiots around. The main difference between university faculty and the general run of the population is that the former tend to be detached from reality. It would be nice if Western could say, "You're an idiot Dewdney, so you're fired." Don't hold your breath.
Robert S. Orr, Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto
Academic Intelligence
I think that the deeper someone delves into any sort empirical endeavour, the more detached from reality they become. To become a university professor it requires one to master a very specific scope of work. This probably creates a very severe form of intellectual tunnel vision, cutting their consciousness off from reality completely. Unlike the general population who's intellectual pursuits are spread out amongst many different areas of work, allowing them to appear to be more in touch with reality to some extent. Although in my opinion neither professor nor "average joe" is noticably more in touch with reality than the other.