The author of this article is a bit too addicted (pun intended) to appeals to authority. Sentences like these, in a scientific article or expository essay, thro

The author of this article is a bit too addicted (pun intended) to appeals to authority. Sentences like these, in a scientific article or expository essay, throw me off: "Dr. Eric Nestler, head of neuroscience research at Mount Cedar Sinai in New York and one of the most respected addiction scientists in the world, published a paper." Alarm bells started ringing. Surely, we don't need to know that he's "the most respected". We need to know if his ideas are provably respectable.... And then, "In this paper he said that..." That is almost certainly elliptical, with the real meaning being, "his paper couldn't conclusively prove or demonstrate this, but he said it, and he is "most respected", so he must be right." But in spite of all those potential biases, the author treads mostly carefully, with good intentions and some apparent academic integrity so that the article is a compelling read. That said, the author is a bit high handed and sensationalist at times, drawing on Shakespeare and Lincoln for powerful poetic effect, which should surely be unnecessary if he hopes to sway us by power of reason and not emotion (or the lobe and not the limbic, to put it in his own words). But we can forgive him, I think, for climbing high on his soap box. He, after all, believes that we're at war.