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Memories of the 28th Century

Appeal to Authority

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This is another in my occasional series of logical fallacies. Appeal to Authority (Latin argumentum ad verecundiam) is quite popular, and some people think that it operates as a trump card. If old So-and-So says so, then it must be true. Well, that's not how one wins an argument; the one with the best facts and the logic wins. Even if your authority is a recognized authority on the subject at hand you have to present the data and the logical argument, but it is more common for people to cite an alleged authority who is not an acknowledged authority on the subject.

An excellent example of a false authority is found in the matter of taking vitamin C to fight a cold. That idea was presented by Noble Prize Winner Linus Pauling, a chemist. There is no doubt that he was an authority, but the vitamin C thing was mythology. In reasonable quantities vitamin C won’t hurt, but the large quantities he suggested might give some people diarrhea, and it has no particular effect against colds. It took a few years before that came to be seen as mythology. Keep in mind that this is an example of an appeal to authority that is just wrong. There are others that are downright harmful, and we have to watch out for those.

In its simplest form the Appeal to Authority is commonly: Fill in the name told me, so it must be true. The name can be anyone from Donald Trump to the neighborhood heroin pusher, and sometimes, as with Linus Pauling, the name is someone who is an authority on something else.

The Appeal to Authority is very common among enthusiasts of the Anthropogenic Climate Change craze. Those people will cite bureaucrats, rocket scientists, or whoever says what they want to hear, and many of those people sincerely believe what they espouse, even though they have no evidence for it, and when they get actual evidence they frequently will reject it, because it disagrees with their worldview or with their preferred "authorities".

Similarly, many religious people will cite some literary work that is supposed to be inspired as proof that their God(s) exists and is whatever they say that it is. While appealing to an authoritative source is a valid way to present evidence, the source of the evidence must be authoritative, and by their nature religious scriptures are not authoritative; they are opinions or worse.

When it is used, this fallacy is usually intended to end the discussion. Someone will say, "So-and-So says so; therefore, it must be true. It wouldn't be a fallacy at all, if both parties agreed that So-and-So was an authority and had actually said whatever was involved. A problem arises with people like Donald Trump, who want to be considered authorities but are not. Trump may also show another way in which this can be a fallacy. It seems that Trump has said that Obama tapped his phone, and he asserted this after it had been found too be false by James Comey, Director of the FBI; it might be that Trump believes this fiction as fact, because he is mentally ill. It is not unusual for delusional, mentally ill persons to believe things for which there is no evidence; that is what delusions are all about.

In a slightly less imperfect world this fallacy would only arise when some one made a mistake, but there are people who set out to deceive, and there are people who are delusional.

It should be noted that this fallacy doesn’t have as ancient an origin as some others. See to Wikipedia article for details, but it was first noted as a source of questionable evidence by John Locke only a few hundred years ago. That is largely because real authorities are valuable sources of information and should be heeded, but abuse of authority has become very common, and we need to watch out for it.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Comments

  1. Magnocrat's Avatar
    True but we need to fish around for consensus among experts. The check method of the brilliant Karl Popper scotched a lot of unfalsifiable scientific hypotheses. Popper was careful to point out that unfalsifiable hypotheses can be useful and he placed some psychology in that group.
  2. PeterL's Avatar
    We have to be wary of consensus among experts, because experts are subject to fashions and "group think" just like everyone else. The Economist has had an occasional series about bad science. Some of the cheating and errors that have been found are shocking, as in "did anyone seriously think that".

    I have tried to avoid psychology when writing or thinking about logic.
  3. Magnocrat's Avatar
    You are speaking of pseudoscience which is widespread on the net particularly in the makeup
    and food industry. Whilst it is true that scientific consensus can be wrong I have little choice as an uneducated layman but to trust it. So I believe we are causing climate change. I believe Darwin was right about evolution.
  4. PeterL's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Magnocrat
    You are speaking of pseudoscience which is widespread on the net particularly in the makeup
    and food industry. Whilst it is true that scientific consensus can be wrong I have little choice as an uneducated layman but to trust it. So I believe we are causing climate change. I believe Darwin was right about evolution.
    I wish you were right, but people who look and act like real scientists and work for major universities regularly ignore the facts and the search for truth that scientists should have. These are the people who are supposed to be trustworthy. The Economist has been running an occasional series on scientific frauds. I linked a few of the articles, but there are even more, and there is more material on scientists doing fraudulent work in other places.

    Here's one article about the problem
    http://www.economist.com/news/briefi...it-not-trouble
    another article
    http://www.economist.com/news/leader...nce-goes-wrong
    and another
    http://www.economist.com/news/scienc...ncentive-malus

    There are more, but one must start somewhere. It is even worse in some branches of the sciences.
    Updated 03-30-2017 at 07:58 AM by PeterL