Linguistics is one of the most strongly-divided fields of study in all of academia, and new competing theories of evolution crop up all the time in biology.
Geology is a physical science, and therefore 'hard', but as you imply, it's way too dull to make an interesting story.
It's not that it's hard to draw a distinction between an informed academic perspective and an ignorant perspective, it's that there is no single informed academic perspective.
Ask ten physicists about how objects move in space and they will all give you the same answer. Ask ten linguists about how language is acquired, and you will get ten different answers.
If you just mean fiction that uses some informed version of genuine scientific theory in a field, fair enough. To me, though, that's not 'hard SF'. It's impossible to establish 'scientific accuracy' in fiction if the field of science discussed has not established a 'truth' of its own.
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Geology is a physical science, and therefore 'hard', but as you imply, it's way too dull to make an interesting story.
It's not that it's hard to draw a distinction between an informed academic perspective and an ignorant perspective, it's that there is no single informed academic perspective.
Ask ten physicists about how objects move in space and they will all give you the same answer. Ask ten linguists about how language is acquired, and you will get ten different answers.
If you just mean fiction that uses some informed version of genuine scientific theory in a field, fair enough. To me, though, that's not 'hard SF'. It's impossible to establish 'scientific accuracy' in fiction if the field of science discussed has not established a 'truth' of its own.