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Unidentified Experts |
| Description: | ||
| The argument supports a position by claiming that it is endorsed by respected and authoritative persons, institutions or organizations, although no specific experts are actually named, nor is there any appeal to the arguments that such experts might give. | ||
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| This fallacy is often expressed by referring to the experts generically as "scientists," "doctors," "leaders," "people in the know," etc., or even merely as "someone" or "they." | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "I'm voting against the governor, since I heard someone say he is dishonest." | ||
| "Your view that the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus is just naive. Bible scholars agree that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are not eyewitness accounts, but are based on previously existing documents." | ||
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| Discussion: | ||
| There is nothing wrong with summarizing the consensus of
opinion within a field of studies. There are, after all, certain opinions
that are accepted by all, or nearly all, of the experts within a field.
However, these experts agree because they find the arguments in favor of a
position to be compelling. Again (as in the Invincible Authority fallacy) it
is the arguments that matter, not the mere opinion of the researchers in a
community. Consider, for example, how the arguments in the above example
might have been developed differently: "There are many passages in Matthew and Luke that are word-for-word identical, or nearly identical, to each other. This would not have happened if both authors were writing from independent personal experience. Hence, Bible scholars agree that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are not eyewitness accounts, but are based on previously existing documents." The experts are still unnamed, but the argument turns on the evidence offered, not on the mere opinion of the unnamed experts. We are also told, incidentally, that the evidence cited (and the conclusion drawn from it) is common knowledge within that field of studies; so, it would be impossible to attribute the argument to only one or two scholars. There is nothing wrong with leaving the experts unnamed when an argument under discussion really is considered convincing by most or all of the experts. However, the fallacy of Unidentified Experts mimics this situation. Like all of the Ad Verecundiam fallacies, it confuses the mere opinion of the experts with the arguments in support of that opinion. Using the mere agreement (or presumed agreement) of a community of experts as a reason for accepting a position is not the same thing as using an argument that is so widely accepted that all of the experts within a community acknowledge its soundness. |
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| Classification: A Fallacy of Irrelevance (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the major premiss) in the personal Ad Verecundiam family. | ||
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| Source: Please contact me if you can point me to a potentially useful clue regarding the original source of this fallacy. | ||
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