Your reply is a correct procedure when the answer to a question is a simple set of figures, or substantiated fact. But what do you say to the person who asks the opinion Question of 'Why did Arkansas seceed and join the Confederacy?' Or "what caused the Civil War?"
Which set of facts do you look up? Whose opinion do you quote? There are as many answers to that question as there are researchers. Do we take a poll of the different answers we may get and say that is the only reason that the good gentlemen of Arkansas who were part of the THIRD secession Convention finally voted to seceed? Did those men vote the way they did to preserve slavery? That is what MOST "experts" will tell you. Or was it something else? The Majority of them were not slave owners.
Why did the Arkansas Militias start forming in 1860, a year before there was any conflict?
The militia was not usually called up except by the Governor during a time of Unrest or war. What was the need? Damon Cluck has done a marvelious work in unravelling the Arkansas Militias, but why was it felt that they were needed? Who is the expert of those questions? Where do you find that answer? I am sure that you can find the order in some legislation law, but that still leaves the question of why to be answered. For Example, As each of the southern states seceeded they recorded a formal document as to their reasons why they took the actions that they did. Most scholars will reject those very documents to find some other answers that fit their personal opinions.
So as to not Highjack this thread from its original purpose, When it comes down, to in the final evaluation of what we think of as an "Experts Opinion", it is not that the person, who is deemed to be the Expert, is all knowledgeable or even willing to looking up the research, if he does not know the answer. It does not even matter if he has credentials as long as his arm is. It comes down to whether or not we simply respect his opinion, whether it is correct and can be proven, or not.
Many of our experts are accorded that respect because of the position that they occupy, such as Professors, or Teachers of History, or Park Interpretors mostly because they have a PH.D' behind their names, but I have found many "experts", some on this board, who do not have that PH.D, who in their area of study, cain't get the time of day for all their research, because it does not fit with the "accepted" narrative of what happened in That War. A Narrative called history which in most parts was written by the victor for his own justification.