Fred Williams writes:
My understanding of the fallacy of appeal to authority is that it is typically viewed as a fallacy only when the authority is not really an authority on the subject being appealed to.
Wrong. The appeal to authority is
always a fallacy, no matter who the authority in question is.
If I were to say that spacetime is curved in the presence of mass and you would ask "how so?" and I would answer "because Einstein said so", I would be commiting the fallacy of appeal to authority. Although experimental evidence supports the assertion, it is a fallacy to say it is true
just because Einstein said so, even if Einstein can be said to be a real authority on the subject and even if it can be proven that the assertion is indeed true.
Whatever anyone
says can never be used as proof for anything.
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