I came across something similar. A colleague asked me which would be more accurate, a pH strip or a pH meter. I said a pH meter.
Thing is, pH strips are manufactured to do what they do while a pH meter depends on the quality of its calibration, which in the hands of the unskilled, can be way off.
He said something about the scientific calculators just coming on to the market as giving a false belief in providing greater results or being “inaccurate to eight decimal places.”
calculator disease is: correct answer to 8 decimal places, but order of magnitude wrong.