Discuss one additional class concept - Bad Appeal to Common Belief

I don’t know that this concept needed additional definition or explanation, because it appears that most class members understand the concept. Instead I chose to discuss it because of its frequent use by the organizations we researched and use in our daily interaction. The concept I chose was the Bad Appeal to Common Belief. As Epstein explains “It is usually a mistake to accept a claim as true solely because a lot of other people believe it” (p 97).

I found a website that appears to list everything you’d even want to know about fallacies, including this one. On this website the defined the above referenced concept as: Appeal to Widespread Belief also known as Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal to Common Practice.

The website explains “The claim, as evidence for an idea, that many people believe it, or used to believe it, or do it. If the discussion is about social conventions, such as "good manners", then this is a reasonable line of argument. However, in the 1800's there was a widespread belief that bloodletting cured sickness. All of these people were not just wrong, but horribly wrong, because in fact it made people sicker. Clearly, the popularity of an idea is no guarantee that it's right. Similarly, a common justification for bribery is that "Everybody does it.”

This is a prime example for the mass hysteria that can be spread by misrepresented and uncontested propaganda: slavery, Japanese internment, the Holocaust, and more currently, refusing to vaccinate your child because of Autism related results.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html