Today's logical fallacy is the Appeal to Authority. On the surface, it sounds like something you might actually want. After all, don't we rely on experts to help guide us? Sure. But like most fallacies, it's not that simple.

This fallacy shows up when someone uses the opinion of an authority figure in place of actual evidence. The key is whether the person being cited is qualified in the relevant field and whether they're backing up their claim with facts. Not all authority is created equal.

If you claim that climate change isn't real because a famous actor said it's overblown, that's not evidence. That's a distraction. That actor might know how to deliver a line on screen, but that doesn't make them qualified to interpret climate data or run atmospheric models. Appealing to their authority in that context is meaningless.

The fallacy gets especially slippery when people confuse earned authority with assigned authority. A doctor is a credible source on medicine. A physicist is a credible source on quantum theory. But a politician, a priest, or a YouTuber talking about vaccines or climate science? Unless they've got the research, credentials, and peer-reviewed publications to back it up, that's not an expert. That's just someone with a microphone.

I've had this come up before in conversation - especially during the pandemic. I had friends who were strongly anti-mask and anti-vaccine. I would share the current scientific consensus, quoting CDC data or summaries from journals, and the response I got was basically, "You're just brainwashed. You're trusting the system. I do my own research." And that research usually involved watching videos from people with no scientific background beyond a webcam and a strong opinion, or articles from conspiracy sites.

I'm not a doctor. But I trust the systems of medicine and science because they earn trust. They're built on transparency, reproducibility, and constant self-correction. If someone makes a claim in science, others can test it. If it holds up, great. If it doesn't, it gets challenged and revised. That's how science works. That's why it progresses. Scientists and researchers love nothing more than proving each other wrong. If you can disprove a widely held scientific belief and have evidence to back it up, publish your results, have it peer-reviewed, and collect your Nobel Prize.

Now, just to be clear - listening to a qualified expert is not a fallacy. Citing peer-reviewed consensus is not a fallacy. But blindly trusting someone just because they hold a title - or worse, because they "sound confident" - is.

Imagine you're working on a database project, and your CEO insists that the company switch to a brand new CRM platform because "he heard about it at a leadership summit." There's no testing. No cost-benefit analysis. No input from the people who actually use the software. But because the idea came from someone with a fancy title and a TED Talk, the company dumps tens of thousands into it - and six months later, they're backpedaling because it doesn't meet their needs anywhere near as well as the trusty Access database they've been using for years. Again, the fallacy isn't listening to people in leadership. It's assuming they're right because they're in leadership.

I've dealt with this exact issue as a consultant and as an educator. Over the years, I've had students who were well into my Developer classes cancel their memberships because their company decided to "go in a different direction." Then, six months or a year later, they come back and tell me, "Yeah, that new system we switched to isn't anywhere near as good as the Access database I was building." It happens a lot.

And that, of course, brings us to Star Trek.

One of the clearest examples of this fallacy comes from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. After the Klingon moon Praxis explodes, the Klingon Empire is left in political and ecological crisis. Chancellor Gorkon proposes peace with the Federation, but shortly after, he is assassinated. Tensions spike, and Starfleet begins preparing for possible war. In the middle of this chaos, Admiral Cartwright urges decisive military action. He's a high-ranking officer, well respected, and speaks with the full weight of his authority. His warnings are taken seriously because of who he is, not because of the evidence. But as the story unfolds, we learn Cartwright was one of the conspirators behind the assassination. He wanted to sabotage the peace process. People trusted his rank instead of questioning his motives or facts. That is a textbook appeal to (unqualified) authority.

So what's the lesson? Authority by itself means nothing. It's just a shortcut for credibility - and shortcuts need guardrails. Ask questions. Look at the evidence. Challenge the source, especially when the stakes are high. Trust, but verify. Because even a Starfleet Admiral can be full of it.

LLAP
RR

P.S. One of the great things about science is that if you erased every science book, wiped every memory, and destroyed all the research, given enough time, science would rediscover the same truths. The process leads to consistent, repeatable results because it is based on evidence and observation. You cannot say the same for other ways people claim to gain "knowledge." Those often rely on tradition, authority, or belief. And without the original source, they vanish.

The great thing about science is that anyone can join the process. If you really wanted to, you could become an expert in any field. You just have to put in the time - read the books, take the classes, do the work. You could reproduce the experiments and earn that authority for yourself.

But the reality is, most of us cannot be experts in everything. There is just not enough time. So we have to rely on the people who are. I could become an epidemiologist if I really wanted to, but I do not have the time or the drive for that. Fortunately, I do not have to. There are many experts in that field, and the beauty of science is that they keep each other in check. If one person gets it wrong, someone else will challenge them. That is how progress works.

Believing that every scientist in a field is secretly conspiring together to push an agenda is not critical thinking. It is conspiracy thinking. And it falls apart the moment you actually understand how science functions.