The Ad Verecundiam and the Misuse of Experts 1 Introduction The last two chapters have concentrated on ad arguments, appeals

to components of our experience that offer to support a variety of claims. One further ad argument that deserves fuller study is ad verecundiam, or the Appeal to Authority or Expertise. The Appeal to Authority is a strategy in argument that few can avoid making. When my doctor tells me that I must make some serious lifestyle changes or else expect undesirable consequences to follow, then my deliberations in deciding whether to make such adjustments involve a direct appeal to her status as an authority. She has knowledge that I do not possess, coupled with many years of experience reviewing the symptoms of people comparable to me. In principle, I could acquire this knowledge and experience directly, but it is simply not practical formeto enter medical school and subsequent practice as a family physician. In the absence of the direct evidence that it is not practical for me to acquire, I rely on the testimony of an expert. Similar situations govern a wide range of my interactions with people or sources that are judged authorities of some description. In the extremely complex world in which we live, no one can be expected to be knowledgeable about everything that affects him and so we must necessarily rely on and trust the say-so of other people. The issue is deciding when that trust is well placed and when it is not. And this holds as much in our professional lives as in the day-to-day reasoning we conduct outside them. Consider, for example, the way teams of scientists conduct their work. Invariably, they build on the work of previous teams in their own and related fields. They accept the results of others experiments and sometimes the conclusions inferred from those results. It would be impractical and often impossible for the teams to replicate all the experiments on which they rely. Hence, they accept them on the authority or expertise of those who conducted

them, assuming they have been conducted according to professional standards and procedures. When consulting a physician or mechanic, I do not think that my subsequent deliberations are fallacious. Yet the Appeal to Authority has regularly been dismissed as a fallacy. Seeing why this is so requires us to explore this argument type in more detail and consider the various ways in which it arises.