The appeal to authority fallacy (a.k.a. argument from authority) is easily one of the most common logical fallacies. This is the fallacy that occurs when you base your claim on the people who agree with you rather than on the actual facts of the argument. This may seem fairly straightforward, but it can actually be quite confusing, and I often see people incorrectly accuse others of committing this fallacy. The problem is that there are clearly times when it is fine to defer to an expert. For example, we constantly defer to doctors, and there is nothing wrong or fallacious about trusting their diagnoses and taking the recommended treatments. My intention is, therefore, to try to clear up some of the confusion about this fallacy and explain when it is and is not appropriate to defer to experts.
There are basically four ways that this fallacy occurs and I am…
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