Many times the mention of "degree" is an attempt to shut down conversation or demean by injecting some sort of rank. The implication is: "you cannot criticize my work because I have higher rank."

Mother nature does not care about degrees. One can either solve the problem at hand or one cannot.

At one point I was working as a lab technician in an engineering development lab and was given a design by the department's PhD. In this particular case I had a few more years of solid experience in this area and started to explain that, "This cannot not work because ...", but he cut me off in mid sentence, guided my glance to his diploma hanging on the wall, and flashed his Phi Beta Kappa key.

We built as specified.

It didn't work. He was surprised, I was not.

In my exit interview he criticized me for not being forceful enough.

I'm not sure if the guy in the department with the prolific patent portfolio even had a degree.