In my experience, enthusiasts often do know better.
Not talking specifically about oil, but preventative maintenance generally - there's a chap on the forums I frequent who has done 300,000+ miles in the same model car as me, and several who do their own maintenance.
As a chartered engineer myself, I've often been able to help people diagnose issues - when the owners have not been getting anywhere with their local dealer. In part this is because after a while you get to know the weak spots on a car, and what needs to be done to fix/avoid the problem.
Manufacturers often have a different agenda to the person who wants to keep their car for years. Otherwise we'd have more manufacturers recommending gearbox oil changes, instead of 'sealed for life', for example. So for example, if you heard from a series of people that the auto gearbox failed at around 120k, would you not consider an oil change every 60k?
Returning to oil, it's possible that manufacturers are more interested in getting flattering mpg and cost-per-mile over the first 80,000 miles, than in long-term durability. All my cars get oil changes every 5k-10k.
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