Appeal to Authority Bias

Have you ever seen someone in a lab coat online making bold health claims?🧑‍⚕️

Whether that person is a doctor or not, the coat makes them appear like an authority on the subject. That’s a classic example of the appeal to authority fallacy (a.k.a. an error in reasoning (1)).

It happens when we accept a claim as true just because an “authority” says so, instead of looking at the actual evidence. That authority could be a celebrity, a “doctor,” or someone who simply looks credible (2,3).

The problem?
Not all authorities are experts. And not all experts speak within their domain of expertise. Someone can be an epidemiologist studying diseases in seal colonies, but that doesn’t make them an expert on COVID-19 in humans. And even real experts can be wrong. What makes a claim reliable isn’t just who says it, but the evidence behind it (4,5,6). 

This tactic works because we naturally trust people who seem knowledgeable or familiar. On social media, that might mean wearing a lab coat, using technical language, or saying “studies show…” without proof.

And it doesn’t just affect people. One recent study found that AI systems were more likely to accept false health info when it was written like a doctor’s note (7).