(Almost) anything that ________ says about _______ is (probably) true.
Bad appeal to authority is a fallacy in which an argument is presented through some authority, but this authority or witness might lack credibility. He or she might lack knowledge in that expertise, may be biased or prejudiced, might have a reason to lie, or may simply not remember or recall such information.
Example:
Ms. Mauro, my senior year of high school Physiology teacher, has told the class that in chemistry, covalent bonds is the strongest bond out of the three (covalent, ionic, hydrogen). Because of Ms. Mauro’s expertise in Physiology, we must conclude that this is true.
So you can say, overall:
(Almost) anything that Ms. Mauro says about chemistry is (probably) true.
*The conclusion involves chemistry, and the authority is an expert in Physiology. Since it is not reliable that a Physiology teacher would be an expert in chemistry, this argument is a bad appeal to authority.
I also wrote about the bad appeal to authority fallacy. I think this fallacy tends to happen because people trust the ones in authority even though like you said they might lack credibility. That is why it is important for people to research information on their own if they feel that their source is not a credible one. Just like in your example pertaining the physiology teacher giving information about chemistry, I would definitely do some more research on what the physiology teacher said because they may not be too sure about the chemistry that they discussed. I liked your example and thought it gave a clear explanation of the fallacy.
ReplyDeletehey emcee,
ReplyDeleteVery well done with your post on the bad appeal to authority fallacy; I found your example very interesting because as much as students like their teachers in high school, most students believe whatever comes out of their mouth as the law because that is what will be on the test. For me, it was not until college that I really started to take look back on my teachers in high school and question their authority. It is critical that we sniff out when an authority figure is not credible because I think, more often than not, they’re not credible.