February 1, 2012

rjfrankenberger's avatarThe Skeptical Ready Check

If you want to believe that the argument, “Well my dad said it was!” is still a good one… I would suggest reading no further.

The Argument From Authority: or “Jenny McCarthy said so… it MUST be true!”

This logical fallacy occurs when someone tries to claim that a fact or argument is correct because it was said by a person who is typically regarded as an authority figure of some sort. Formally the fallacy can be shown this way:

  • Person A makes claim C.
  • There is something positive about A that causes them to be regarded as an authority figure in some way.
  • Therefore claim C is true.

Anyone who has ever been a student of formal logic will see the problem right away. The reason that this is a fallacious argument is because the personal qualities of Person A have abso-stinkin-lutely nothing to do with the truth or…

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February 1, 2012

Stuart Robbins's avatarExposing PseudoAstronomy

Introduction

I haven’t done a post in almost two years to add to my very incomplete series on logical fallacies and fallacious argument techniques. However, due to recent posts – especially in the comments section – on my blog, I thought this would be a good time to re-visit the specific and very common logical fallacy of the “argument from authority,” and I want to then contrast that against the “scientific consensus.” They are not the same thing.

In actuality, I have addressed this difference before, albeit it was in the very early days of my blog and I want to pull out more specific examples and be more explicit this time.

The Argument from Authority

The argument from authority is really a very simple logical fallacy to spot: Person A has seeming authority in some subject, therefore Person B needs to believe what they say.

An example from…

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February 1, 2012

February 1, 2012

February 1, 2012