Topics Logic

Question Another application of the ad hominem fallacy questions... Let's say there is an expert who holds a doctorate and masters in their field of specialty. They have worked in their field for 30+ years. They have received grants from government sources, but also the private sector (which as I understand, is not uncommon). They are peer reviewed and published. Now let's say that they present a study, with all its evidences and reasoning. But one of the associations this expert is affiliated with has a particular worldview. It is claimed, that because of that affiliation, there exists a conflict of interest and a strongly expressed bias (perhaps a mission statement or motto). As a result, this expert cannot be trusted, has a significant loss of credibility, and the reasoning and evidences provided in any study therefore, should be thrown out, it does not need to be addressed or evaluated. To me, it seems rather odd. The argument presented ought to be evaluated as if it is made anonymously. The argument, study, research ought to stand or fall on its own merits. But because the claim maker here (the field expert) is associated with a particular organization, all work done, conclusion, research, testimony, opinions are less credible and do not need to be addressed if there are competing conclusions, research, testimonies, opinions, etc... if they have no affiliations with biased organizations. So is the ad hominem fallacy being committed here? Or is it the case that not all arguments actually need to be evaluated and instead, there are times when we can instead, simply attack the argument maker?

Accepted:
November 1, 2012

Comments

I am inclined to agree with you that arguments and evidence need to be evaluated on their own terms and not dismissed out of hand on the grounds that the "expert" is affiliated with an institution that has a worldview that is thought to be biased or somehow discredited. So, a biologist working in a conservative Christian institute who has generated a case for intelligent design, needs to have her or his work taken seriously by journals or peer groups and given a fair evaluation, even if the majority of practicing biologists reject intelligent design. Still, there are boundaries that most disciplines have over what can count as sound arguments and evidence. Presumably a Christian biologist would not gain in credibility if she appealed to Biblical revelation as part of her evidence base for the journal Nature (though she might have credibility if she was writing for fellow Christian biologists or for a debate in philosophical theology that sought to balance revelation and scientific claims), any more than if Darwin added to his Origin of Species an appendix in which he reported that his account of evolution was endorsed enthusiastically by a series of para-psychical phenomena.

Stepping back from current science, it seems that we have in fact come to reject whole fields and methods of inquiry in the past, and would be very inclined not to take seriously individual contributions in the way of claimed evidence and support from such fields. I suggest this is true of theories about how to identify witches (in the so-called witch craze, there were a variety of methods employed to determine whether someone was a witch, including witch poking finding a dull spot in one's skin where a demon may have entered and the tear test which involved reading an account of Christ's crucifixion and if the subject did not shed tears, this was evidence she was a witch). A more recent case that we often forget is phrenology, the "science" of investigating a person's character by studying the shape of the skull. This was once a highly respected field with lots of experts, but it came to be so discredited that I doubt any recalcitrant practicing phrenology would have the ghost of a chance for getting a serious hearing. Would this be a case of an ad hominem? I think it would be better described in terms of the field of science progressing to the point where contemporary scientists have confidence that certain modes of inquiry and projects are themselves unreliable or demonstrably false (or, if you will, subject to a bias against current science).

Still, in an ideal world of limitless time and resources, I think we should be at least open in principle to someone claiming to have solid evidence that Hogwarts is a real place for training actual witches and wizards, and open to someone who claims to have demonstrated the connection between the shape of the skull and character, and even open to the Society for Para-sychical Research if it claimed to have definitive, irrefutable evidence of post-mortom contact with Darwin. Ideally, I think we should sift through the arguments and purported evidence, though for practical purposes we should spend less time with, say, economic theories based on the practice of voodoo ("Voodoo Economics") rather than an economic theory based on the empirical study of market behavior.