I think you are right in that it sells many people short, but then again having no good academic credentials is selling yourself short.

Data science is not like security. There it is more accepted that good engineers/researchers do not necessarily have the best accreditation. It seems that data science/engineering is turning around to this though.

It's not that autodidacts can not build bridges, it is that the people with the data and money do not want their bridges build by autodidacts.

Anyway... back to studying http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/ for me :).