Steve: Appeal to Authority Fallacy

By: steve-wang

The Appeal to Authority Fallacy is where an argument seems to be good because someone respectable or someone with power supports it. People may fall for this fallacy because, we are trained for a young age to respect people with authority. Furthermore, we may lack knowledge of that specific topic which may cause us to more likely believe that if a person quotes someone of authority, that person must be right. An example of this could be, sometimes parents tell their children to do something and the reason given is “I told you so” or “I am your (parent)”. Eventhough the reason given does not explain why that thing needs to be done but it is effective on some people because kids are taught to listen to their parents. Another example could be, if an English language teacher tried to teach about Biology. They or others might listen to the teacher simply because they are a teacher. This might still happen even if the teacher has absolutely not knowledge of Biology and everyone knows it. A real life example of this happening would be, in 2020, then US president, Donald Trump suggested that people research if injecting disinfectant into the body could treat the coronavirus (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177). Even though it is widely known that drinking disinfectant is harmful to the body. Even so, some people might have started researching this because the president, who is not a medical professional, said so. This could be a problem for society because, people might be mislead and do stupid things just because an influential person said something.