For what its worth, I know several highly regarded scholars with "COIN PhDs" and while all contribute in their own way to the body of work and advice on this topic, my assessment is that they tend to know more than they understand, and that their advice is also are overly relied upon due to their academic credentials, which in turn contributes to exacerbating that first condition. Obviously there are exceptions, and this varies in degree among them.

I guess my cautionary bit of advice is, that in the pursuit of knowledge, never lose sight of the fact that knowledge is only the gateway to understanding. It is good to be smart, but it is far better to be wise. I suspect the first stage of wisdom is realizing that one isn't all that smart to begin with.

I've also had the pleasure to meet a few people who are very wise on this complex topic. Only a couple of those had PhDs. (or stars, for that matter). So seek wisdom and seek out those who you believe to possess it as well. As to knowledge, as Professor Holmes told one of my classmates in 1st year contracts class, "you will find that books hold the knowledge you seek very well." I took that to mean you can always look the facts up, but that the real key was to learn how to think about the topic we were studying. Good luck