They are right more often than you’d expect. Irrational escalation, loss aversion, confirmation bias, etc play their part everywhere causing senseless projects to be pushed to completion.
When the "they" is at least another expert in the same field and not a total stranger completely ignorant of pretty much every relevant detail, and the "you'd expect" part starts at a baseline of nearly 0% for people walking in out of the street unfamiliar with the specific problem at hand, then yes, "they" are right more often than I'd "expect."
