I am sorry to be a pedant but you people are using the term "appeal to authority" to mean the opposite of what it should mean. I have mentioned this before. Here's the definition:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html "Also Known as: Fallacious Appeal to Authority, Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority . . . . . . This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious." For example, we have Mary Yugo claiming that she is something of an expert in calorimetry. She has designed and tested calorimeters. If that is true, that makes her a legitimate authority on the subject. If she cites herself when making a technical claim that is *not* a fallacious appeal to authority. It is a valid appeal. The problem is that she has not revealed her identity, so we cannot judge whether she is actually an authority. We have to take her word for it. That is okay but not very satisfactory. In any case, that does not make this a fallacious appeal to authority; it makes it an incomplete or unverified appeal. She wrote: > If the arguments stand on their own, why would you need an identity? > The answer is you do not need an identity, but having a valid authority does bolster a claim. > I'm sure I don't need to remind you that relying on the identity > of someone who supports a claim as evidence for the claim is the > logical fallacy of "appeal to authority". No, it is *not*. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It would only be an appeal to authority fallacy if the person you cite is not actually an authority. A statement by an authority may be wrong but we should give it weight. It is more likely to be correct then a statement by a nonexpert or amateur. It can be difficult to know who is actually an authority. Many people who make pronouncements about cold fusion consider themselves authorities but it often turns out they know nothing about the subject. The book, "The Experts Speak" is a cynical compendium of quotes that turned out to be mistakes. This book is an attempt to discredit experts. However, most of these quotes are from people who were not experts; but only thought they were. The real experts in most cases were correct. - Jed
