The thing I’m really sick of is this lazy reliance on the internet whereby someone finds the first thing that they think even remotely supports their opinion and regurgitates it in a post, with the added “it’s a scientist” or “they’ve got a PhD” as evidence that what’s posted is true.I'm sure you're sick of all this, but let me say just a couple more things.
First and foremost, you were right and I was wrong about the definition of the fallacy. Argument from false authority is a completely separate fallacy and I confused them.
However, you've taken such an all-or-nothing stance by saying that being an expert has no bearing on whether we can trust the accuracy of their statements, that it's hard not to be wrong with that. Logically Fallacious warned that you can take this fallacy too far and go from "healthy skepticism to full blown denialism". If we're talking about simple facts, like the capitol of Norway, or whether "hypertronic" is what the 'H' in HTML stands for, you should simply trust an expert to be correct. Even in your example in this post, your expert is simply stating the definition of the argument from authority fallacy. If it isn't important, it's fine to trust experts because they are generally more correct than average Joe Schmoe.
I think it's only a fallacy when someone insists that credentials behind a quote are the only evidence necessary. Let's say I cite some facts about death rates in some country from the CDC. It's fine to point out that the CDC is my source, but if you ask me to show the methodology behind collecting the data and I respond, "It's the CDC! Of course it's accurate!" that's when the fallacy kicks in.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the internet, it’s that for any cockamamie theory, there’s someone with a PhD that believes it. Now, these people used to be unknown to the general population. But now, any fool can have an online presence, and we’re losing the ability to discern what information is credible.
And yes, I know that sometimes someone will come forward with an idea that’s initially seen as crazy by other experts, but turns out to be true. But seriously, that’s rare compared to all the other times where ideas come forth that are actually just... crazy...
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