Carl Sagan on arguments from authority

Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" chapter (1995)

Kevin Duffy on trusting the experts

I’m an investment analyst. My job is to question the experts. In fact, what I’ve learned over a 35 year career is that the experts are almost always wrong when a) their ideas are simple, b) repeated over and over, and c) widely embraced by the crowd. This is how propaganda and the Big Lie work.  If you ever want to get to the truth, you’d better understand this.

~ Kevin Duffy, exchange on Quora, response to argument from authority, January 23, 2020