Appeal to Authority Fallacy: How to Avoid It

My friend Gullible and I were having a discussion:

Gullible: “I heard from Andrew Yang that universal income is the best solution to fight poverty.”

Me: “Why do you believe that?”

Gullible: “Yang is successful and famous, so he must be right.”

This is a common informal fallacy called “The appeal to authority.”

What Is an Appeal to Authority Fallacy?

Appeal to authority arguments look to support a claim by appeal to the person who’s making the claim. Since claims are true or false regardless of who makes them, the person who’s making the claim is irrelevant to evaluating the claim’s truth or falsity. That’s why appeal to authority is categorized among the fallacies of relevance: it appeals to irrelevant information in an effort to get people to endorse a claim.

For example, if Einstein claims that happy marriage starts when you marry your first love, that doesn’t automatically make the claim true. Einstein was a genius physicist, but that doesn’t mean everything he says is true. Accepting a claim simply because of who’s…