More on how to think

The argument from authority is fallacious only under specific circumstances. The range of human knowledge is so vast, and knowledge in specific areas so deep, that none of us can have a substantial grasp of more than a fraction of our heritage of learning. I don't know much about opera, shipbuilding, barley cultivation, electrical engineering, parasitology, Sanskrit literature, or the mathematics of infinities. Obviously, the list of subjects I don't know much or anything about is orders of magnitude larger than the subjects about which I have some substantial grasp -- enough to read critically what others write -- and the subjects about which I can legitimately claim to be an authority are even fewer. That's why I pay an auto mechanic and and electrician as well as a physician.

So, as we go through life, we have to depend on experts to provide conclusions about most matters. That is the only wise and sane way to live. Knowing which experts to trust would be very challenging indeed if we didn't have credentialing and peer review systems. Whether you like it or not, people who have advanced degrees and get their papers published in peer reviewed journals are much more likely to be reliable authorities than any random blowhard. And that's also why we have certification and/or licensing systems for auto mechanics, electricians and physicians.

However, experts are not always right. We have to believe them most of the time, but I or someone I refer you to presents a well documented, well reasoned argument that you are not inclined to agree with -- whether because it does not accord with your preconceptions or your religious reverence for Donald J. Trump, for example -- it is not a valid  response to say either "The great sage Simplicio thinks otherwise so I can ignore this," nor to say "This is just an argument from authority." The former is indeed the argument from authority. If Simplicio has provided an argument that rebuts my offer, you need to say what that is so we can evaluate it. It may well be that Simplicio is wrong after all. On the other hand, what I have offered is not an argument from authority, it is an actual argument that happens to have been provided by authorities. You need to read the argument and, if you find something wrong with it, say what that is. That it comes from authority is not a reason to reject it, it is a reason to accept it by default, and the burden is on you to show why it is wrong.

 

The Lancet is based in Britain but it is an international journal of public health and medicine. The editors frequently commission panels on matters of interest internationally or in specific regions. The authors of the Lancet report on public health in the Trump era are in fact Americans. As with all Lancet commissions, they represent a range of expertise and the sections on particular issues are written by people with the specifically relevant expertise.