"Professor Khan says the treatment works, and he is a famous surgeon, so it must work." This argument relies on
- A. statistical evidence
- B. an appeal to authority rather than to evidence
- C. a controlled experiment
- D. a personal attack
Explanation
Expertise makes a claim worth listening to but does not by itself make it true, and the argument offers no data at all. An appeal to authority becomes especially weak when the authority speaks outside their field or when experts disagree. Attacking the person instead would be the opposite fallacy, ad hominem.
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