Appeal to Authority

So, it has been a while since I have talked about a fallacy on here, so I wanted to talk about one that happens a little to often for comfort. Appeal to authority on its most base principal goes something like this:

A says X about subject matter Y.
A should be trusted about subject matter Y due to them holding some form of sway in the field of Y.
Therefore, X is correct.

This all falls apart in step two. Unless a person displays competence in a field and has evidence to back up their claim, believing their claim based on the fact that they are perceived as an authority alone is fallacious. This is not to say that you shouldn't accept information from a person who holds authority, it just needs to be accompanied by proof.

A big example of this in popular culture is with evolution. If you watch most news reports/debates about evolution you will see a representative from both sides of the argument given equal airtime and voice based on them both being experts in their fields, despite the evidence being mostly one sided (that is about global warming, but I think it still makes a good point). Creationists/Intelligent designers don't show a good knowledge of how things work so taking that half formed knowledge and using it as a place of authority is wrong.

Aristotelians had this problems as well. Aristotle was taken as a genius and that everything he said was the truth. The problem with this is that he was often wrong. Because he was considered an authority for so long a lot of his statements were accepted with no thought for a long time, until people decided to check on his facts. One of which was that because women have a smaller jaw than men they have less teeth. Despite this being observably false with just a little effort people accepted it for a long time.

There are a couple of off shoots of this argument that are used fairly commonly.

Dismissal of evidence 

A says X about Y with Evidence Z
B, an authority, says X is false.
Therefore A is wrong.

Once again, without evidence of how X is false B's claim is fallacious. This might just be a disagreement in how the evidence was interpreted, but that doesn't discount A.

The last variation of this that I want to talk about is Argumentum ad verecundiam, which means argument from authority. This is basically a person of authority shutting down someone because they are not an authority on a subject. Without supporting evidence of why the person without authority is wrong this argument is fallacious.

Eshi had this happen to him when he was talking to a professor about the aesthetic nature of morality. Eshi claimed that at its core morality was an aesthetic subject, while the professor claimed that morality was based on absolutes. Their argument went on for a while and ended when the professor said something akin to "well I have a doctorate, so there is no way that I am wrong on this." This is clearly a shitty thing to do.

So there you have it, the appeal to authority fallacy. Its all to common, but knowing what it is takes away its power. So, unless someone has evidence to backup their claims, don't accept them offhand.