Concept
An argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam (argument against shame), is a form of fallacy when the opinion of a non-expert on a topic is used as evidence to support an argument or when the authority is used to say that the claim is true, as authorities can be wrong. The argument can be considered sound if the authority is an expert and when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context, and if the argument does not rely on the authority to establish truth. Historically, the appeal to authority has been both classified as non-fallacious and fallacious with some that held that it can be a strong or at least valid defeasible argument and others claim it is weak or an outright fallacy. The general form of this type of argument is: Person or people claim that is true. Person or people are experts. Therefore, should be believed. This fallacy occurs when a person appeals to a false authority as evidence for a claim. These fallacious arguments from authority are the result of citing a non-authority as an authority. The philosophers Irving Copi and Carl Cohen characterized it as a fallacy "when the appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand". Copi stated: "In attempting to make up one's mind on a difficult and complicated question, one may seek to be guided by the judgment of an acknowledged expert who has studied the matter thoroughly. [. . .] This method of argument is in many cases perfectly legitimate. [ . . . ] But when an authority is appealed to for testimony in matters outside the province of that authority's special field, the appeal commits the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam ". In other words, one could say that the premise of the argument does not hold in such a case, rendering the reasoning fallacious. An example of the fallacy of appealing to an authority in an unrelated field would be citing Albert Einstein as an authority for a determination on religion when his primary expertise was in physics.