Thursday, February 19, 2015

Peter Gøtzsche and Robert Whitaker speaking in Copenhagen in 2014

Peter Gøtzsche identifies a fallacious form of argumentation as the "You are not one of us" fallacy. I think it is not quite the same as the arguing from authority fallacy, but I suspect might be much more widely used. It is much more of a chore to research the truth of what some person says than to judge their advice by their memberships, connections, credentials and qualifications, and why would you even bother? If the club of powerful people say it is so, there seems little point in arguing or wondering to the contrary. The "You are not one of us" argument generally gets a free pass.

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