The “smartest people in the world” claim from the Yang Gang is a mild example of the argument from authority. The authority being deferred to is often religious, as in the gospel song and bumper sticker “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” But it can also be political or academic. Intellectual cliques often revolve around a guru whose pronouncements become secular gospel. Many academic disquisitions begin, “As Derrida has taught us . . .”—or Foucault, or Butler, or Marx, or Freud, or Chomsky. Good scientists disavow this way of talking, but they are sometimes raised up as authorities
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