Appeal to Authority
Treating a claim as proven because an authority figure endorses it — fallacious only when the authority is irrelevant, biased, or wrong.
Origin
Catalogued by medieval logicians as argumentum ad verecundiam ('argument to modesty,' i.e., appealing to the audience's deference). It is not always a fallacy: trusting your doctor about a diagnosis is reasonable. It becomes one when the authority is outside their expertise (a physicist on nutrition, an actor on virology), when there is disagreement among real authorities, or when the appeal substitutes for the actual evidence.
Modern usage
Constant flashpoint in modern science and public-health argument. 'Trust the scientists' is appeal to authority; sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. Celebrity endorsements, expert panels, and 'Nobel laureate says…' headlines all live here. The pandemic put the fallacy back on the front page.
In the wild
Einstein was a vegetarian, so I'm a vegetarian.— common usage (appeal-to-authority example)
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