I don't think anyone should underestimate the listening skills of many great studio engineers.
Listening skills related to their job, sure. Listening skils when it comes to fidelity matters, no. Let me give you a very specific and public example.
Some 15 years ago, someone posts a set of files to see if people could identify compression artifacts in a blind manner on AVS Forum. There were a set of four files from my memory. I listened to them and with all my skills in hearing compression artifacts, I could not identify any difference between two of the files. So I voted that way. Voting involved sending a message to the person conducting the blind test. His answer to me: "there were people who did worse" or something to that effect!
Testing finishes after a ton of people voted blindly that way. After a while, the person who set up the tests, reveal the results, showing the two files that I thought were identical to be different. Incredulous, I performed a binary comparison, showing the files to be identical. I post that and at first, the test conductor didn't believe what I was showing. Then he goes and checks and finds out he had uploaded the same file twice by accident!
Meanwhile, we have a very vocal member who was a major mixer of movie sounds including music. He had voted those two songs differently! He was extremely upset and almost refused to accept the truth. The truth was the truth and test conductor put a note that the test was invalid and that was that.
When I was at Microsoft, we would routinely conduct large scale tests, hoping they would uncover compression artifacts better than our trained team and I could. In no time did we ever find anyone that was remotely as good as our trained personnel. They would fail miserably and be no better than general public.
I myself had little ability to tell small impairments until I put myself in rigorous training. After six months of that, I could hear differences like it was child play, and couldn't believe others could not. Decades of being an engineer didn't help. What helped was a) that training and b) true understanding of what the impairments were and as a result, how to look for it.
Another story.

Some audiophiles insist that musicians or audiophiles who play music have better hearing when it comes to determining fidelity. This too is false.
My Piano teacher was sent two electric pianos to test. I told him it would be a good angle to have his students evaluate them instead him as a Pro as these were very cheap pianos. I first sat at the cheapest piano. Instantly I was bothered by the thumping sound the keys were making. He hadn't noticed it, or noticed it as much. I turned off the piano and then played the same keys. All of a sudden he could hear it much better and while as not bothered by it as me, that bit of training did help him.
Next was the more expensive piano. I hit one or two key and am instantly bothered by the speakers that are below the piano and firing downward! So unnatural to me that it was hard for me to play on it even though it was a good electric piano. Again, I had to point this out to me with him saying he hadn't realized that until I mentioned it.
Bottom line, none of these people have as their job, detecting impairments in fidelity. They need to be trained and taught what the fidelity impairments are. You do this by teaching them what could be wrong and expose them to many instances of elevated error. Over time, you reduce the degree of error and continue. This is what Harman's How to Listen software worked. When I first listened, I too failed at level 2 or 3. But with a bit of training, reached the level 6 and 7. Despite my training in other areas of fidelity, hearing and determining nature of tonality errors took a bit of work.
So it is for good reason that I dismiss appeals to authority as I stated. Come with receipts. Show me these experts in controlled studies where we know the answer and see how they do. Otherwise, their opinion is best ignored if you want something reliable.