EN BG

Appeal to Authority

"A Nobel laureate said it, so it must be true." But Nobel laureates have said a lot of things — including things that turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

An appeal to authority is when someone uses a person's status or credentials as proof that a claim is correct. It feels natural. We can't be experts in everything, so we rely on people who are. The problem starts when the authority replaces the evidence entirely. When "Dr. X believes this" becomes the argument instead of supporting it. When credentials in one field are stretched to cover claims in a completely different one. A brilliant physicist is not automatically right about economics. A famous doctor is not automatically right about politics.

Even genuine experts within their own field can be wrong. They can have conflicts of interest, institutional pressures, funding dependencies, or simply be operating on outdated data. Science doesn't progress by authority — it progresses by evidence, replication, and the willingness to prove yourself wrong. The question is never "who said it?" It's "what's the evidence, and can it hold up to scrutiny?"

This is closely tied to the halo effect — our tendency to assume that someone impressive in one area must be impressive in all areas. That's not logic. That's your brain taking a shortcut.

References