Fraudulent Appeal to Authority. The tactic of citing sources that don’t actually back up a claim.
Fraudulent Appeal to Authority. The tactic of citing sources that don’t actually back up a claim.
This ploy utilizes the halo effect, anchoring bias, the mere exposure effect, autopilot thinking, and informational learned helplessness. And it’s fraud.
Parker Molloy asked if there’s a name for this kind of lie, using gish-gallop evidence-dumping.1 (I think evidence dumping is meant as another term for document dumping.2)
By which I’m referring to the act of linking to/screenshotting/presenting evidence from a legitimate source as a way to claim some authority backs you up (even if the actual document does no such thing)
I would call it a fraudulent appeal to authority. And, when I looked for it, because it seemed the natural option, I found at least one previous usage of the term with exactly this meaning from over a decade ago.3 (There was another on Reddit even older, but it didn’t explicitly explain the usage.)
Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology by xelder 12 years ago Jehovahs-Witness.com - comment by Konceptual99 However, that's still intellectually dishonest, using quotes from scientists who don't agree with the conclusion, in order to support their argument. It's a fraudulent appeal to authority. They're counting on the average reader to not look at the footnotes, let alone read them and understand the implications!
Pseudoscience wellness grifters selling unproven remedies often use this tactic. They post a claim, and then they link to a scientific study to give the impression that it backs up their claim but that, once examined, by no means supports the claim, in fact it often refutes their claim, or is just not even a study of what they’re claiming. But since often nobody examines the linked material at all, never mind closely, and many don’t know how to examine and consider scientific studies,4 the liars get away with it. Social media clout chasing hotshots sometimes also do it, but sometimes more because they take clumsy short-cuts when seeking attention to sell themselves as smart and knowledgeable, rather than a particular product as desirable.
There are two mirrored tactics that seem to work to let this type of bullshit bypass critical thinking, two sides of the same manipulative coin. Leading with the lie, and the truth with a lie chaser.
Leading with the lie is the problem that can be mitigated with The Truth Sandwich.5 If you lead with the lie, and repeat it, it utilizes both anchoring bias, where people tend to stick with the first piece of info received on a topic,6 and the mere exposure effect, where anything repeated enough that it becomes familiar will tend to be accepted as true out of a sense of comfort with familiarity.7
Truth with a lie chaser is what I call when someone leads with something that they know you already believe, to get you on board with where they’re going, to artificially induce the halo effect - where people who already like or trust a particular person or entity, are more likely to believe what they say so as to avoid cognitive dissonance.8 Sales professionals call this “The Yes Set” sales technique, described as “creating a pattern of positive answers by asking questions or making statements with which the other person is extremely likely to agree” and which they openly admit is a type of hypnotherapy.9 Someone looking to push lies would start with something that’s self-evident or well-proven, or something you will agree with, before introducing new information that might be false or harder to swallow otherwise. It’s about gaining trust by creating a comfortable rapport. I’ve described this before in the context of influencers - Today they're promoting what you think is good, and then tomorrow they might take money to promote something else that you don't agree with.10 Influencers tend to target a certain audience with content they know will play well in order to gain followers, and then the social media account is in a position to either be sold to someone looking for that audience niche,11 or to take money to insert advertisements to a particular audience12 or sell propaganda narratives to that target market.13
Because most people are busy, and we live our lives largely on autopilot,14 liars can get away with fraudulent appeal to authority, and people just pass on wrong information all the damn time as a habit.15 That’s misinformation when people pass it on, but it often originates as disinformation - when it’s got a covert destructive objective.16
And when people are bombarded with so much information, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and just… lots of information, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, and confused. And that tends to lead to inaction as a default — as a reflex to avoid making the wrong decision by making no decision. This is sometimes called analysis paralysis17 or informational learned helplessness.18 And is a known tactic of cognitive warfare, as described in a NATO document from 2021.19 And it’s effective at demoralizing would be activists and of course, lowering voter turnout.
I’m using “fraudulent appeal to authority” to describe this tactic of citing sources that don’t actually back up a claim because "false appeal to authority" is a term for when someone references a person who doesn’t have the expertise to be cited as a reference expert in a particular context.20 In this case “fraudulent appeal to authority” is citing expertise that doesn’t back up the claim, and fraud is described by The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words, as “a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.”
And this is similar to the legal description I had quoted to me by Rand Waltzman, that appears to be from a journal article on bank fraud: “Fraud takes place when a person deliberately practices deception in order to gain something unlawfully or unfairly.”21 I asked a similar question to Rand Waltzman, who posted about celebrity testimonials in propaganda. Having a taxonomy is definitely helpful in understanding and communicating these things.
I wanted a term for yet another fraudulent tactic where purveyors of unproven products use quotes from the social media of a scientist or doctor or expert with somewhat of a public profile, where the scientist is merely referencing a technology that’s being hyped in terms of a future application down the road, and then uses them on a website selling a product that's not passed any scientific or regulatory approval, and puts these quotes in the website template where you would expect to see customer testimonials or expert reviews, without these scientists actually endorsing this product, maybe with them maintaining plausible deniability, or maybe without even knowing their name is being used in this way. I guess if I had to come up with a term for this, my best guess would be to call it fraudulent testimonial misrepresentation.
Whatever else you call it, all this is definitely deception, and definitely fraud.
Buyer beware.
References:
TPA - Is There a Name For This Kind of Lie? Because We Need a Name For This Kind of Lie. It's all very frustrating, tbh! PARKER MOLLOY FEB 8, 2024 By which I’m referring to the act of linking to/screenshotting/presenting evidence from a legitimate source as a way to claim some authority backs you up (even if the actual document does no such thing)
NJ Supreme Court Puts the Kaibash on Document Dumping in Pretrial Discovery Posted by Glenn Reiser, October 2, 2018 - Shapiro, Croland, Reiser, Apfel, & Di Iorio, LLP In the context of a medical malpractice suit, the NJ Supreme Court recently held that it is not permissible to answer a specific written interrogatory question in pretrial discovery by burying the information in a document dump without citing to the specific documents that are responsive to the question. Brugaletta v. Garcia, _ N.J. _ (July 25, 2018). New Jersey trial courts have the authority under Rule 4:17-4(d) to compel a party producing documentary records to provide, with the records, a narrative that specifies where responsive information may be found.
Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology by xelder 12 years ago Jehovahs-Witness.com - comment by Konceptual99 However, that's still intellectually dishonest, using quotes from scientists who don't agree with the conclusion, in order to support their argument. It's a fraudulent appeal to authority. They're counting on the average reader to not look at the footnotes, let alone read them and understand the implications!
Conspirituality Podcast 157: Science & Sensibility Jun 8 2023 How did “following the science” get so confusing during the pandemic? As the publication of our book draws closer, Derek shares his best practices for science literacy, and examples of where grifters and conspiracists maximized confusion to exploit wellness consumers.
@GeorgeLakoff on Twitter & FrameLab podcast on soundcloud 1. Start with the truth. The first frame gets the advantage. 2. Indicate the lie. Avoid amplifying the specific language if possible. 3. Return to the truth. Always repeat truths more than lies. Hear more in Ep 14 of FrameLab w/@gilduran76
The Decision Lab: Why we tend to rely heavily upon the first piece of information we receive. Anchoring Bias, explained. Anchoring bias is a cognitive bias that causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we are given about a topic. When we are setting plans or making estimates about something, we interpret newer information from the reference point of our anchor, instead of seeing it objectively. This can skew our judgment, and prevent us from updating our plans or predictions as much as we should.
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University: Echo Chamber Why Is It So Convincing To Repeat A Claim Again And Again — Even If It’s Patently Untrue? by By Jennifer (Jennie) Latson The marketing term “effective frequency” refers to the idea that a consumer has to see or hear an ad a number of times before its message hits home. Essentially, the more you say something, the more it sticks in — and possibly on — people’s heads. It doesn’t even have to be true — and that’s the problem. What advertisers call “effective frequency,” psychologists call the “illusory truth effect”: the more you hear something, the easier it is for your brain to process, which makes it feel true, regardless of its basis in fact. “Each time, it takes fewer resources to understand,” says Lisa Fazio, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University. “That ease of processing gives it the weight of a gut feeling.” That feeling of truth allows misconceptions to sneak into our knowledge base, where they masquerade as facts, Fazio and her colleagues write in a 2015 journal article.
ECOTALKER: The Halo Effect After people form an initial impression of someone, they try to prove it right because they don’t want to face cognitive dissonance and cognitive consistency seems like an easier option. Also, sometimes it is difficult to evaluate different qualities in isolation and people end up resorting to the more unchallenging option of assessing on the basis of the most visible trait. How the halo effect makes us use judgment heuristics or mental shortcuts, is overtly simple to understand yet we unconsciously let it cloud our views. This might tempt you to jump to the conclusion that someone smart would never fall for this. Ironically, a study shows that participants who scored higher on an IQ test were more susceptible to the halo error.
The International Retail Academy - Kayleigh Fazan - Sep 11, 2022 - How to Make More Sales in Retail Through the Power of YES The ‘yes set’ technique consists of creating a pattern of positive answers by asking questions or making statements with which the other person is extremely likely to agree. It actually started out in hypnotherapy, but it’s incredibly beneficial as a tactic on how to make more sales in retail, too. If a customer gets into a habitual response of saying yes to your front-of-house staff, they’ll be much more likely to do the same with the actual sale! Traditionally, the ‘yes set’ is mainly used by retailers when selling and talking about a product.
Influencers and Direct Marketing Don't Wait For Everybody - Episode 006 CHLOE HUMBERT OCT 21, 2023 Influencers are not going to save us. They can get word out about something, but then it could be, you know, the truth with a lie chaser. Today they're promoting what you think is good, and then tomorrow they might take money to promote something else that you don't agree with.
TribalGrowth - 7 Best Marketplaces To Buy & Sell Social Media Accounts (Ranked). by John Gordon Social Tradia, Instagram. The Toronto-based firm boasts an easy-to-use website that categorizes accounts for sale based on niche and number of followers. One of the best things about this marketplace is that all transactions are carried out over well-established payment portals.
Twitter from @theSGLF: State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF) Feb 9, 2022 Our latest ad is making an impact and liberals are now agreeing with what conservatives have been saying all along: mask mandates do more harm than good.
Skepchick - Big Oil Bought my Favorite Science Influencer, by Rebecca Watson, January 26, 2023 If you search for information about the overwhelming damage caused by oil and natural gas refining you will find that quite easily, but if you search for information on the damage caused by propane, you’ll find pretty much nothing but press releases from the propane industry bragging about how burning it isn’t as bad as burning diesel. And that, I’m sad to say, is what Calandrelli’s video is: propaganda wholly funded by the Propane Education and Research Council, or PERC, a fossil fuel industry group that the New York Times recently exposed as an ethically (and maybe legally) shady operation that is currently spending millions of dollars to hire “influencers” on TikTok, YouTube, and cable TV to sow misinformation about zero-emission energy, despite the fact that the law that allowed them to collect that money apparently stipulates that it be used for “research and safety.” The quotes the New York Times got from propane industry leaders are absolutely disgusting, like one executive saying that they need to “combat the growing narrative that fossil fuel combustion is the main cause of climate change, and that propane is a dirty fossil fuel,” which, you know, it is and it is? They see zero-emission electric as a “threat to (their) industry,” which it is, which is good.
PBS Hacking Your Mind - Living on Autopilot - Episode 101 Aired: 09/09/20 According to Kahneman, when our slow-thinking system doesn't have enough information to answer a question involving numbers, we simply stay on autopilot. And our autopilot system takes what might be called a shortcut and anchors its answer to the last number that crossed its radar, even when that number is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. -And that leads us to reach an absurd conclusion. I know it seems bizarre that anyone would do that, and surely you and I, reasonable people, would never do that in our real lives. Well, you do it all the time.
Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased, Gizem Ceylan, Ian A. Anderson, and Wendy Wood, Edited by Susan Fiske, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; received September 28, 2022; accepted December 3, 2022, January 17, 2023 120 (4) e2216614120 Why do people share misinformation on social media? In this research (N = 2,476), we show that the structure of online sharing built into social platforms is more important than individual deficits in critical reasoning and partisan bias—commonly cited drivers of misinformation. Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others' attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers. Suggesting that sharing of false news is part of a broader response pattern established by social media platforms, habitual users also shared information that challenged their own political beliefs. Finally, we show that sharing of false news is not an inevitable consequence of user habits: Social media sites could be restructured to build habits to share accurate information.
The Cognitive Crucible - #142 BRIAN MURPHY ON FREEDOM/SECURITY TRADEOFF Brian Murphy describes the definition of DISINFORMATION as having the following aspects - a covert indirect source, intentionality that is destructive, and a political, military, or economic objective.
Investopedia - What Is Analysis Paralysis? Definition, Risks, and How to Fix By James Chen Updated July 07, 2022 Reviewed by Gordon Scott Fact checked by Vikki Velasquez Analysis paralysis is an inability to make a decision due to over-thinking a problem. An individual or a group can have too much data. The result is endless wrangling over the upsides and downsides of each option, and an inability to pick one.
Psychology Today - Giving Up: Informational Learned Helplessness. It's exhausting when it’s hard to figure out what is true and what is false. December 23, 2021 | Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader The plodding repetition of conspiratorial lies can lead to “cognitive exhaustion.” But it goes deeper than that. Peter Pomerantsev, author of the book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, popularized the concept of “censorship by noise” in which governments “create confusion through information—and disinformation—overload.” In time, people become overwhelmed, and even cognitively debilitated, by the “onslaught of information, misinformation and conspiracy theories until [it] becomes almost impossible to separate fact from fiction, or trace an idea back to its source.” And so “censorship by noise,” particularly common in regions governed autocratically, leads people to experience crushing anxiety coupled with a markedly weakened motivation to fact-check anything anymore. They may then “like” or share information without critical review because they lack the energy and motivation to take the extra steps to check it out.
First NATO scientific meeting on Cognitive Warfare (France) — 21 June 2021 The impairment of cognitive processes has two harmful consequences: i) Contextual maladaptation, resulting in errors, missed gestures or temporary inhibition; and ii) Lasting disorder, which affects the personality and transforms its victim by locking him or her into a form of behavioral strangeness or inability to understand the world. In the first case, it is a question of causing transitory consequences, circumscribed by a particular critical environment. The second concerns the transformation of the decision-making principles of individuals who then become disruptors or responsible for erroneous actions, or even non-action.
Public Services and Procurement Canada, 2024 TERMIUM Plus®, the Government of Canada's terminology and linguistic data bank - logic: false appeal to authority. In this error in logic, the writer quotes a recognized expert or celebrity–but on a topic outside of that person’s area of expertise. This strategy is often used effectively in advertising.
Frauds and Forgery in Nigerian Banking Industry 1970 - 1998. Alhaji Umar Lawal Aliyu. 2018. IJIRCT, Volume 4, Issue 1. Pages 15-22. https://www.ijirct.org/viewPaper.php?paperId=IJIRCT1801004 Fraud takes place when a person deliberately practices deception in order to gain something unlawfully or unfairly.