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In other words, it is logically invalid to prove a claim is true simply because an authority has said it. The explanation is: authorities can be wrong, and the only way of logically proving a claim is providing real evidence or a valid logical deduction of the claim from the evidence. [13] [14] [15]
Fallacy of quoting out of context (contextotomy, contextomy; quotation mining) – selective excerpting of words from their original context to distort the intended meaning. [31] False authority (single authority) – using an expert of dubious credentials or using only one opinion to promote a product or idea. Related to the appeal to authority.
Appeals to popularity are common in commercial advertising that portrays products as desirable because they are used by many people [9] or associated with popular sentiments [18] instead of communicating the merits of the products themselves. The inverse argument, that something that is unpopular must be flawed, is also a form of this fallacy. [6]
Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments that are fallacious.Often currently this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself.
In other cases, its repetition may be cited as evidence of its truth, in a variant of the appeal to authority or appeal to belief fallacies. [3] Proof by assertion can also occur when the evidence cited is actually no different than the assertion itself.
Argumentum ad baculum (Latin for "argument to the cudgel" or "appeal to the stick") is the fallacy committed when one makes an appeal to force [1] to bring about the acceptance of a conclusion.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about ...?") is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view, whataboutism is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter ...
An appeal to the authority of proper experts (i.e. mainstream scientists/scholars) does not constitute a logical fallacy. Basically, it is all written in WP:RS and WP:VER: if appeal to authority would be outlawed, Wikimedia Foundation would be branded as a criminal organization. The appeal to authority is not in itself fallacious.