Truth and Authority:

Why Facts Are Facts No Matter Who Says Them

David Allen LaPoint

PrimerField Foundation

January 2, 2026

This is a plain-English version of a university-level philosophical paper.

Summary

People often assume that if an expert says something, it must be true. We trust doctors, scientists, professors, and other credentialed professionals to tell us what's real. This trust makes sense—experts usually know more than the rest of us about their fields. But there's an important difference between two questions: "Should I believe this person?" and "Is what they're saying actually true?" This paper argues that while experts can help us figure out what's true, they don't make things true just by saying them. A fact is a fact because it matches reality, not because someone important claimed it. Understanding this difference matters for science, public discussion, and how we think about knowledge.

1. Introduction

We tend to link truth with status. If someone has a PhD, a medical degree, or an impressive title, we're more likely to believe what they say. We defer to scientists in technical debates, accept what religious leaders say about spiritual matters, and trust doctors without questioning them. Meanwhile, we often dismiss correct information when it comes from people who seem unqualified.

This paper addresses a common confusion. There are two separate questions people often mix up. The first question is about reality: What makes something true? The second question is about knowledge: How do we find out what's true? I'll argue that authority matters for the second question but has nothing to do with the first. Whether a statement matches reality doesn't depend on who says it.

This isn't an attack on experts. Experts usually have better evidence, better training, and a track record that earns our trust. The point is that expertise affects how reliable someone's claims are, not whether reality itself changes based on who's speaking. If a Nobel Prize winner says something false, it's still false. If a child says something true, it's still true. Experts help us find truth, but they don't create it.

This basic idea—that who says something doesn't change whether it's true—is actually shared by most philosophers, even those who disagree about other things. So the practical lessons from this paper apply broadly.

2. What Makes Something True?

Before we can talk about truth and authority, we need to be clear about what "true" means. This paper uses the most intuitive definition: A statement is true if it matches how things actually are in the world.

Put simply: A claim is true when it corresponds to reality.

This idea goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said that speaking truth means saying "of what is, that it is." The key insight is straightforward: truth is about matching what's actually out there in the world, not about matching what people believe, what's useful, or what authorities say.

What matters here is this: on this view, truth is a relationship between statements and reality. The person making the statement—their degrees, their reputation, their job title—is simply not part of what makes something true or false. Nearly all major theories of truth agree on this point. None of them include "who said it" as part of what makes something true.

3. Truth Doesn't Change Based on Who's Speaking

3.1 The Main Point

Here's the central claim: If a statement is true (or false), it stays true (or false) no matter who says it.

Think of a concrete example. The statement "Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom" is either true or false based on what water actually is. If a chemistry professor says it, it doesn't become "more true." If a five-year-old says it, it doesn't become "less true." Water's makeup is what it is, and the statement either matches that reality or it doesn't.

An important note: This argument applies to factual claims about how the world is—not to opinions about how it should be. Questions about values, policies, and what we ought to do involve different considerations. This paper focuses on factual claims about the real world.

3.2 Some Seeming Exceptions

There are some apparent exceptions worth addressing, though they don't actually undermine the main point.

Statements about the speaker. When someone says "I am hungry," whether that's true depends on who's speaking. But this isn't because the speaker's identity changes what's true. Rather, it's because "I" refers to different people in different cases. "I am hungry" said by Alice is really about whether Alice is hungry; said by Bob, it's about whether Bob is hungry. These are different claims with potentially different answers. Once you specify whose hunger you're asking about, the truth depends only on whether that person is actually hungry—not on who made the statement.

Official declarations. When a judge says "I hereby pronounce you married," the statement actually creates a new reality—the couple is now legally married. A random person saying the same words wouldn't have the same effect. Does this show that authority can create truth?

Not really—at least not in the way that threatens the main argument. In these cases, authority is part of a specific system of rules that defines how certain social facts get created. A judge has the power to create marriages because that's how we've set up the legal system. But this narrow exception doesn't extend to facts about the natural world. A judge's authority to marry people doesn't mean scientists can make atoms behave differently by declaring it. Social rules are a special case, not a general principle.

To be clear: this exception only applies to systems where authority is built into how facts get created (like legal systems). It doesn't mean experts can create scientific truths by assertion. The focus of this paper is on claims about the natural world—physics, chemistry, biology, medicine—where facts exist independently of what anyone says about them.

3.3 What This Doesn't Mean

It's important to be clear about what this argument doesn't claim:

It doesn't mean everyone is equally reliable. A trained chemist is more likely to say true things about chemistry than a random person. That's about probability and reliability—not about what makes things true.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't trust experts. We rely on expert testimony for most of what we know. The point is that testimony gives us evidence about truth; it doesn't create truth.

It doesn't mean we should ignore expertise. It clarifies why expertise matters: experts have better access to truth, not some special power to define it.

4. How Authority Properly Affects What We Believe

We've established that authority doesn't change what's true. Now let's look at how authority legitimately affects what we should believe. This is a different question—about our knowledge, not about reality.

4.1 Authority as Evidence of Reliability

While authority doesn't change what's true, it reasonably affects how confident we should be in claims. This isn't a contradiction—it's the difference between reality and our knowledge of reality.

If a heart specialist tells you something about heart disease, you should probably give that more weight than if a random stranger told you the same thing. Why? Because heart specialists are usually more reliable about heart disease. Learning that someone is an expert increases your confidence that what they're saying is true. That's reasonable thinking.

Here's the key insight: our confidence levels represent our best guesses about what's true, given what we know. They're about our state of knowledge, not about reality itself. Reality has already settled whether something is true or false. Authority affects our confidence about what's true; it doesn't affect the underlying facts.

Authority is evidence about reliability—it suggests the speaker probably has access to good information and thinks carefully about it. But reliability isn't the same as truth. Even the most reliable expert might be wrong about a particular claim. Authority increases expected reliability without guaranteeing truth.

4.2 When to Trust Experts Less

Trusting authority makes more sense when: the claim falls within the expert's actual field, the expert has no obvious conflict of interest, other experts agree, and the claim fits with available evidence.

Trusting authority makes less sense when: the claim is outside the expert's specialty, the expert might benefit from the claim being believed, experts disagree significantly, or the claim contradicts well-established evidence.

Even strong authority can't override clear contrary evidence. If a doctor says a treatment works, but careful studies show it doesn't, the studies win. The final judge is always reality, accessed through evidence, not credentials alone.

5. When Appeals to Authority Go Wrong

"Appeal to authority" is traditionally listed as a logical mistake. But the error is often misunderstood. The mistake isn't in considering authority at all—that would make most learning irrational. The mistake is treating authority as proof of truth or as immune to contrary evidence.

The flawed reasoning goes: "This person is an expert; they said X; therefore X is definitely true and we shouldn't question it." This is wrong because authority increases probability but doesn't guarantee truth.

A subtler version of the mistake happens when expertise in one area is assumed to carry over to another. A Nobel Prize winner in physics has no special authority on economics. A famous surgeon has no special authority on climate science. Credentials justify attention within their scope, not universal acceptance.

The worst form treats questioning authority as automatically inappropriate—as if credentials create a protected class whose statements can't be challenged. This misunderstands the relationship between authority and truth. It confuses social respect with logical necessity.

6. Historical Examples

History shows many cases where expert consensus was overturned by evidence. These examples don't show that experts are unreliable—they show that even the most qualified people remain accountable to reality.

It's worth noting that expert consensus is generally reliable and tends to get closer to truth over time. The following examples aren't evidence that experts are usually wrong—quite the opposite. They show the specific point that even reliable experts can be mistaken, and that evidence is the ultimate judge. The lesson is that experts are fallible, not that they're unreliable.

6.1 Science

In the 1800s, Lord Kelvin—one of the most respected physicists of his time—calculated that Earth could only be 20-100 million years old based on how fast it was cooling. His physics was solid given what he knew. But the discovery of radioactivity revealed an additional heat source he couldn't have known about, which changed everything. This shows science working correctly: new evidence revised prior understanding. Kelvin's impressive credentials couldn't protect a conclusion that reality contradicted.

Similarly, for decades prominent chemists defended "phlogiston theory" (a now-abandoned explanation for combustion) before Lavoisier's oxygen theory won out. The earlier experts weren't incompetent—they were working within a framework that evidence eventually overturned.

6.2 Medicine

In the 1840s, doctor Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that hand-washing dramatically reduced deaths from childbed fever. The medical establishment rejected his findings for years—partly because germ theory didn't exist yet, and partly because accepting his findings meant admitting doctors themselves were causing deaths. Semmelweis was an expert whose correct observations were rejected by other experts. The dispute was ultimately settled by reality: mortality statistics and the later development of germ theory proved him right.

The lesson isn't that medical experts are unreliable. It's that even expert consensus can be wrong when it conflicts with evidence. Whether Semmelweis was right was determined by whether hand-washing actually reduced deaths—not by whether the medical establishment accepted it.

7. Responding to Objections

7.1 "Isn't This Argument Circular?"

Someone might object: "You defined truth as matching reality, then concluded that truth depends only on reality. That's circular." This objection has some force—the argument does assume a particular view of truth.

However, this isn't just a word game. The claim is that "matching reality" captures what we normally mean by "true." When we ask whether a claim is true, we're asking whether it matches how things actually are—not whether an authority said it, not whether it fits with other beliefs, not whether it's useful. The definition is defended because it captures this everyday meaning.

More importantly, the main conclusion holds even if you reject this particular view of truth. As mentioned earlier, virtually all major theories of truth exclude speaker identity from what makes things true. So the practical point—that we shouldn't treat authority as creating truth—is defensible across many different philosophical positions.

7.2 "But We Have to Rely on Experts"

Another objection: "We can't verify most claims ourselves. We have to rely on experts. Doesn't this make authority practically the same as truth for us?"

This confuses truth with justified belief. We may be justified in believing things based on authority. But whether our belief is true depends on reality, not on our justification. We can have good reasons to believe something false, and we can believe true things for bad reasons. Authority affects whether our beliefs are reasonable; reality determines whether they're true.

Put another way: we often need experts to learn what's true. But depending on experts to find truth is different from experts creating truth. Our reliance on experts is about knowledge, not about what reality is.

7.3 "Isn't Truth Socially Constructed?"

Some argue that truth is created by society—that what counts as true is determined by agreement, power, or institutions.

This view requires distinguishing two kinds of facts. Some facts are created by society: what counts as money, what makes a marriage legal, what counts as a valid contract. Authority can play a role here—a judge's ruling makes something legally true in a way that an ordinary person's opinion doesn't.

But facts about nature—how molecules are structured, how diseases work, how physics operates—aren't created by social agreement. Institutions help us discover these facts (through research funding, expert training, peer review), but they don't make these facts. Water's structure isn't determined by what chemists agree to say about it.

This paper focuses on domains where facts exist independently of human agreement—including the natural sciences, medicine, and factual claims generally. In these areas, authority cannot create truth, and "trust the expert" thinking is most likely to go wrong.

8. What This Means in Practice

8.1 For Science

Science is fundamentally about evidence, not authority. An expert's job is to interpret evidence reliably, not to serve as an independent source of truth. Scientific claims gain acceptance through testing, peer review, and confirmation by evidence—not through the credentials of who makes them.

This doesn't diminish the value of expertise. Scientists are trained to evaluate evidence, design good studies, and avoid mistakes. But their authority comes from their connection to evidence, not from their degrees alone. A credential without evidential support carries no weight.

8.2 For Public Discussion

Public discussion would benefit from clearly separating "Should we pay attention to this person?" from "Is what they're saying true?" Credentials answer the first question, not the second. We should listen to experts because they're more likely to be right, while understanding that their saying something doesn't make it right.

This view supports both proper respect for expertise and proper willingness to question it. Experts deserve attention and often deference, but not immunity from evidence-based challenge.

8.3 For Education

Education should help people understand why truth doesn't depend on who's speaking. Students should learn to evaluate claims on their merits while also learning when to appropriately trust expert testimony. The goal is neither blind rejection of expertise nor unthinking acceptance of authority, but thoughtful engagement with evidence and sources.

9. Conclusion

Truth isn't granted by degrees, awards, institutional affiliation, or social status. Truth is determined solely by how things actually are in the world.

Separately, authority can reasonably affect what we believe. Experts are more likely to be right, and we're often justified in believing them. But this is about knowledge and reasonable belief, not about what makes things true.

Confusing these two things produces the error this paper addresses: treating authority as creating truth rather than as evidence about truth. The fix isn't to reject expertise but to understand its proper role. Experts deserve our attention because they're connected to evidence, not because credentials give them special power over reality.

In practice, we almost always learn truth from other people—we depend on testimony. But even then, what ultimately decides is reality itself, accessible in principle by anyone who looks carefully enough. We depend on speakers to learn truths; we don't depend on them to make truths.

Whether spoken by a Nobel Prize winner or by a curious child, a true statement is true because it matches reality—and a false statement is false for the same reason. Who's speaking is, in the end, irrelevant to whether what they're saying is true.

The stakes here go beyond academic philosophy. When a society treats "trusted source" as the same as "truth," it becomes vulnerable to institutional error, groupthink, and the hardening of false beliefs. Authorities who are treated as truth-makers rather than fallible guides cannot be corrected by evidence—their word becomes the evidence. This is dangerous. Understanding that reality, not authority, is the final judge isn't just a philosophical point. It's a requirement for the self-correcting inquiry that scientific progress, sound policy, and reasonable public discussion all depend on.

References

Aristotle. (c. 350 BCE). Metaphysics. Book IV, 1011b.

Coady, C. A. J. (1992). Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford University Press.

David, M. (2016). The Correspondence Theory of Truth. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Goldman, A. I. (2001). Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63(1), 85-110.

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

Lackey, J. (2008). Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge. Oxford University Press.

Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press.

Walton, D. (1997). Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority. Penn State Press.