How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 195

77. Appeal to Authority
Also Known as: Fallacious Appeal to Authority, Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority,
Questionable Authority, Inappropriate Authority, Ad Verecundiam
An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
 Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
 Person A makes claim C about subject S.
 Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More
formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be
fallacious.
This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person
in question is not an expert. In such cases the
reasoning is flawed because the fact that an
unqualified person makes a claim does not provide
any justification for the claim. The claim could be
true, but the fact that an unqualified person made
the claim does not provide any rational reason to
accept the claim as true.
When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are
accepting a claim as true without there being
adequate evidence to do so. More specifically, the
person is accepting the claim because they
erroneously believe that the person making the
claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the
claim is reasonable to accept. Since people have a
tendency to believe authorities (and there are, in
fact, good reasons to accept some claims made by
authorities) this fallacy is a fairly common one.
Since this sort of reasoning is fallacious only when
the person is not a legitimate authority in a particular context, it is necessary to provide some
acceptable standards of assessment. The following standards are widely accepted:
The person has sufficient expertise in the subject matter in question.
Claims made '