Just because something is popular with laypersons doesn’t necessarily mean it is good.
One good illustration of this is how the “History Channel” has effectively become a show focused more on Aliens, supernatural phenomena, and conspiracy theories rather than actual history because they likely felt they would be more popular and gain higher ratings by effectively becoming the televised version of “The National Enquirer” or some other sensationalistic supermarket tabloid of its ilk.
Academic peer review is meant to sift through that noise to determine if the arguments and underlying evidence can hold up to serious scrutiny from fellow academic peers who have put in some effort to become experts in the same/similar fields as the one submitting the work to be reviewed is/aspires(grad students) to be a part of.
I find this comparison to be ironic considering not too long ago…especially during WWII and before, one didn’t need a college degree or even a high degree of education in many countries to serve as military pilots.
For instance, the USAAF was able to recruit a large cadre of good to excellent pilots despite LOWERING their entrance requirements to 2 years of college initially and later, doing away with requiring any college whatsoever until the end of the war. They also had an aviation cadet program(eliminated in the early-mid '60s when the USAF decided they wanted all their officers/pilots to be college graduates) where one can become a pilot and gain an officer’s commission by successfully completing an intensive one-year training regimen without necessarily having to go to college though college students/graduates were preferred. The last was how the #3 ranking USAF Korean War Ace was able to start his career as a fighter pilot.
The vast majority of top fighter aces in the Imperial Japanese forces(All Navy incidentally) were enlisted pilots for most of their fighter pilot careers. Only one of the top aces, Lt. JG Junichi Sasai was a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval academy.
In contrast, the #4 ace with far more kills, Saburo Sakai started his career as an enlisted sailor after effectively flunking out of high school at 16. He spent a few years as a turret gunner on a battleship before being selected for the highly competitive and cutthroat enlisted pilot training program. He only became a commissioned officer by being promoted from the enlisted ranks more than a decade after enlisting and after he has already established himself as one of the top Japanese aces.
The #2 ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa ended his education at late elementary/early junior high school and had been working as a textile worker before noticing a poster encouraging young boys/men like him to try out for the highly competitive and cutthroat enlisted Naval flight trainee program and the rest was history.
In the RAF…especially US volunteers during WWII, some of the volunteers included folks like a NYC taxi driver who later recounted fighting with Luftwaffe ME-109s was no different than weaving in and out of chaotic NYC traffic as a cabbie.
Incidentally, even nowadays, one can become an RAF fighter pilot/commissioned officer(2 - 3 A-Levels) without having attended college though that’s far less common now than it was a few decades back.
And by most accounts, being a military pilot, especially a fighter pilot is far more demanding and complex than being an airline pilot.