Argumentum ad populum

{{bronze}}{{title-italics}}{{logicnav}}
{{cquote|Eat [[shit]]. Twenty trillion flies can't be wrong.|||[[Bill Maher]]<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OwFSLm4pII Bill Maher lays waste to global warming deniers]</ref>}}
{{Cquote|Sanity is not [[statistical]]|||[[George Orwell]], ''[[1984]]''<ref>[https://archive.org/details/GeOr_1984/page/n273 ''1984''] by George Orwell, page 274.</ref>}}
'''''Argumentum ad populum''''' (Latin for "argument to the people") is a [[logical fallacy]] that occurs when something is considered to be [[Truth|true]] or good solely because it is popular. Undoubtedly many popular notions are true, but their [[truth]] is not a function of their popularity, except in circumstances where other factors ensure that popularity is related to truth. The fallacy is the opposite of an [[appeal to the minority]].

The fallacy is an [[appeal to authority]] and a [[conditional fallacy]].

==Alternate names==
These are some of the other names that this particular logical fallacy goes by, hereby listed under alphabetical order down below:
*appeal to numbers (''argumentum ad numerum'')
*appeal to the gallery
*appeal to majority
*appeal to mass opinion
*appeal to the mob
*appeal to popularity
*appeal to popular prejudice
*argument by consensus
*authority of the many
*bandwagon fallacy<ref>Glenn, Cheryl; Loretta Gray.  ''Hodges' Harbrace Handbook.'' 16th ed. Thomson: Boston, 2007: p. 479.</ref>
*common belief
*''consensus gentium''
*democratic fallacy

==Forms==
{{syl
|2='''X''' is popular.
|4=(''[[Enthymeme|unstated]]'') Popular things are true.
|5=C|6='''X''' is true.
}}

===Bandwagon variant===
[[File:StateLibQld_1_192843_Travelling_entertainers_on_an_open_wagon_in_Charters_Towers.jpg|thumb|Hop on, it'll be loads of fun.]]
{{syl
|2='''X''' is popular/gaining popularity.
|4=(''[[Enthymeme|unstated]]'') I should do what is popular.
|5=C|6=I should do '''X'''.
}}

==Explanation==
The argument is problematic because unfortunately, the premise "the majority is always right" may not be true. When phrased like this, few people would say that they'd fall for such a stupid thing — but it's still a remarkably easy trap to fall into, precisely because people don't realise that it's a bandwagon that they're jumping on. In a manner similar to the {{wpl|Matthew effect||,}} something that gains attention (legitimately or [[manufactroversy|otherwise]]) will attract more interest. This interest generates more interest, like an [[internet]] [[meme]] circulating around internet forums, and before you know it everyone is on the bandwagon shouting "yee haw!!" While this is merely just how information tends to propagate, the bandwagon argument truly becomes fallacious when people use it as an excuse to say that an issue is important or that the circulating opinion must be correct.

It is not necessary for the facts to get in the way of a good argument, the bandwagon has its own momentum and will carry its passengers whether true or not.

Sometimes, when events are due to external causes, both political sides will jump onto the same bandwagon and each will accuse the other of doing so (for example, [[terrorism]]).

===In Conspiracy Theories===
The most common form of this fallacy in conspiratorial media is something along the lines of "30% of Americans doubt that..." or "30% of Americans don't believe the official story". Of course that kind of sentence in the beginning of a conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense. It doesn't prove anything relevant. It's not like the theory becomes more true if more people believe in it.

The percentage itself is always very dubious. It may be completely fabricated or exaggerated by interpreting the poll results conveniently (eg. one easy way for bumping up the percentage is to interpret all people who didn't answer or who didn't know what to say as "doubting the official story"). Furthermore, it is also worth noting that this doubles as an example of abusing ambiguity, as these people could "doubt the official story" in vastly different ways. For example, regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, eighty two separate people have been listed by various conspiracy theorists as the person who actually fired the bullet which killed the then-President.<ref>''Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy'' by Vincent Bugliosi</ref> If somebody used a statistic which claimed a certain number of Americans didn't believe Lee Harvey Oswald was behind Kennedy's death in order to push one specific culprit, that would be utterly fallacious because it's rather likely a good chunk of the people surveyed did not agree with this person's pet theory.

That kind of sentence is not proof of anything, yet it's one of the most used sentences in conspiracy theories. It is basically trying to say: "Already this many people doubt the official story, and the numbers are increasing. Are you going to be left alone believing the official story?"

==Legitimate use==
When the truth value of the proposition is really a function of the popularity. This can arguably be the case in grammar (most native speakers think a certain construction is grammatical, thus it is grammatical (e.g. the {{wpl|split infinitive||).}} However, prescriptivist commentators would disagree with ''argumentum ad populum'' in this case as well; see ''[[argumentum ad dictionarium]]'' and matters of convention and etiquette.

===Democracy===
The idea that groups of people are better at decision making than the individual is the cornerstone of voting and governmental systems such as [[democracy]]. It is also the key component of [[Wikipedia]], where the contributions of many editors over time will produce a reliable and good quality article, and of news aggregation sites ([[RationalWiki]]'s [[WIGO]] system being one example) where articles are voted up/down based on group consensus.<ref group=note>Similar logic is used by [[Reddit]], with varying degrees of success. At its worst, Reddit and similar sites are firm proof of the idea that "as the size of a community increases, [[Dunning-Kruger effect|the likelihood of new members being competent at thinking decreases and/or the proportion of idiots increases]]".</ref>

===Scientific consensus===
What's the difference between ''most people believe X'' and [[scientific consensus]], which is, at the end of the day, ''most scientists in the field believe X''? Doesn't this make scientists out to be somehow [[Elitism|superior]] to the rest of the population?

There are two significant differences:
#Scientific consensus doesn't claim to be ''true''; it claims to be our best understanding ''currently held by those who study the matter''.  Scientific claims for truth are always [[Falsifiability|tentative rather than final]], even if they are often very impressive tentative claims for truth.
#Scientific consensus is built upon a foundation of [[logic]] and systematic [[evidence]] — the [[scientific method]] — rather than popular prejudice.  The consensus comes not from [[Argument from authority|blindly agreeing with those in authority]], but from having their claims [[Peer review|thoroughly reviewed and criticised]] by their peers. (Note that even a long-established scientific consensus can be overthrown by better logic and better [[evidence]], typically preceded by anomalous research findings.)

==Examples==

"Everyone does it!"

This logical fallacy is often used by [[children]] as an excuse for wanting something (''everybody's got one'') or getting into mischief (''everybody's doing it''). Despite the juvenile nature of the argument, it is often used by people who should know better, particularly by those who are trying to force other people to their way of thinking. A case in point is the push in the [[United States]] to get [[creationism]] taught in [[public school]] [[science]] classes. The [[argument]] runs along the lines of suggesting that because a majority of people in the U.S. believe in creationism, it should therefore be taught as science.

===Fifty Million Frenchmen===
{{Cquote|Here we come, we're fifty strong/And fifty Frenchmen can't be wrong|20px|20px|"The Mob Song", ''Beauty and the Beast''}}

"Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong" (or a variant thereof) is used, though often [[Satire|sarcastically]] (e.g., [[Blazing Saddles#Fifty Million Frenchmen|''Blazing Saddles'']]<ref name=dubowsky>''Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness'' by Jack Curtis Dubowsky (2016) Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1349687138. Chapter 7: ''Blazing Saddles'': Music and Meaning in 'The French Mistake'.</ref>{{rp|214}}), to justify a point of view by alluding to its general acceptance. It is a demonstration of ''argumentum ad populum'' and is falsified ''prima facie'' by the [[French]] obsession with Jerry Lewis as a comic genius in the 1960s. The phrase derives from the 1927 song "Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong"  that appeared in the film ''Fifty Million Frenchmen''. The lyrics compared free attitudes in 1920s Paris with American [[conservative]]ness, [[censorship]], and [[Prohibition]] in the United States.<ref>[http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/4/messages/1199.html Fifty million frenchmen] by Antony Smythe on (May 07, 2000) ''The Phrase Finder''.</ref><ref name=dubowsky/>{{rp|214}}

It has also been noted that "The entire population of [[Germany]] can't be wrong ''[[World War II|twice]]''."{{nofact}}

Along these lines ("Don't be stupid, be a smarty…"<ref>[https://transcripts.thedealr.net/script.php/the-producers-2005-1ep1 ''The Producers'' (2005) Script] ''TranscriptDB''.</ref>), it has also been argued that a whole lot of smart people together can't be wrong, so why not invest in [[cryptocurrency]] ("One of the silliest arguments about crypto’s importance — because so many smart people were shifting their careers into crypto-related projects, there must be something to it — also has been unmasked as naive.")?<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/11/crypto-fraud-sam-bankman-fried-bitcoin Crypto was never more than a solution in search of a problem] by Adam Lashinsky (October 11, 2023 at 6:15 a.m. EDT) ''The Washington Post''.</ref>

===''Argumentum ad populum''… without the ''populum''===
{{main|Silent Majority}}
A twist on the ''argumentum ad populum'' is claiming that some idea is more popular than it is, and then using that alleged popularity in order to justify some [[extremism|extreme]] measures against the alleged promoters of the idea. Examples include:

*[[Christian fundamentalist]]s countering [[Islamic]] [[terrorist]]s' farm system of [[suicide bomber]]s by [[brainwashing]] children into thinking "we are enlisted in the [[holy]] military service of [[Christ]] that all our life long we should fight against the world, [[Satan]], and our own flesh,"<ref>[http://www.ccel.org/creeds/helvetic.htm Second Helvetic Confession] (foundational [[Calvinist]] creed), chapter XX</ref> as shown in the documentary ''[[Jesus Camp]]''.
*The claims of [[Joseph McCarthy]] and the [[John Birch Society]] that there was a [[Red Scare|massive secret communist conspiracy]] to subvert the First World and capture it for the [[Soviet Union]].
*The claims underlying [[homosexual recruitment]] [[conspiracy theories]], as well as [[Bill O'Reilly]]'s chatter about a [[Lesbian Gang Epidemic|lesbian gang epidemic]]: that an idea of [[homosexuality]] as superior to [[heterosexuality]] is [[Heterophobia|commonplace]] among the gay population, thus justifying their exclusion from schools ''etc.''
*Some exaggerated claims by such organs as ''Searchlight'' magazine about the [[Zero|popularity]] of the [[British National Party]], positing that the party might turn [[Britain]] into a [[Fascism|fascist]] [[dictatorship]] sometime next week and start curtailing [[civil rights]]. This, the magazine argues, means that the civil rights of all persons even tangentially associated with the BNP must be promptly curtailed.

The term "[[Silent Majority|silent majority]]" is often invoked by people who decide to fall back on ''argumentum ad populum'' without any actual evidence that their view is at all popular. The flaw with the phrase is obvious: if the majority is silent, then how can one identify its views?

==Wisdom of the crowd==
The '''{{wpl|wisdom of the crowd}}''' {{efn|From the 2003 book ''The Wisdom of Crowds'' James Surowiecki<ref>''The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations'' by James Surowiecki (2003) Doubleday. ISBN 0385503865.</ref>, though the idea/phenomenon predates the 2003 book.<ref name="Jorm_B">Jorm, A. (2025). Conditions for a Valid Consensus. In: Using the Delphi Method to Establish Expert Consensus. Advancing Methods for Interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-8357-4_3</ref><ref name="MannesSollLarrick">Mannes, Albert & Soll, Jack & Larrick, Richard. (2014). The Wisdom of Select Crowds. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 107. 276-299. 10.1037/a0036677. </ref>}} - also known as '''epistemic populism''' and '''best of the public''' (per [[Conservapedia]])<ref>[https://www.conservapedia.com/Best_of_the_public Conservapedia: "Best of the public"]</ref> - is a perceived phenomenon whereby groups of people can make better informed decisions than individuals alone.<ref>Simoiu, Camelia & Sumanth, Chiraag & Mysore, Alok & Goel, Sharad. (2019). Studying the “Wisdom of Crowds” at Scale. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. 7. 171-179. 10.1609/hcomp.v7i1.5271.</ref><ref>Navajas, J., Niella, T., Garbulsky, G. et al. Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds. Nat Hum Behav 2, 126–132 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0273-4</ref><ref>Janssens M, Meslec N, Leenders RTAJ. Collective intelligence in teams: Contextualizing collective intelligent behavior over time. Front Psychol. 2022 Oct 31;13:989572. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.989572. PMID: 36389562; PMCID: PMC9659728.</ref><ref name="Jorm2025_A">Jorm, A. (2025). How Wisdom-of-Crowds Research Can Help Improve Deliberative Consensus Methods. In: Expert Consensus in Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9222-1_9</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8788780.stm BBC News - Should we trust the wisdom of crowds?]</ref> Such as [[Communitarianism|"collective wisdom" of a large group]] of informed amateurs producing a "[[Persecution complex|better]], [[Liberal bias|less biased]]" result than a small group of [[denialism|established experts]].

While the wisdom of the crowd is sometimes associated with ''argumentum ad populum'', they are distinct ideas. The latter being a fallacy that treats popularity as evidence of truth, whereas the former is an effect that applies under specific conditions where collective estimates are assumed to outperform individuals.

Many examples used to explain the idea are [[anecdotal]], but the ''underlying phenomenon'' is well-studied [[Empiricism|empirically]].

===Origins===
The concept known as the ''wisdom of the crowd'' has philosophical antecedents in [[Aristotle]]'s ''Politics'' (Book III), where he argued that a large group of individuals may collectively reach better judgments than a small number of experts, even if each individual possesses only limited insight. <ref>Aristotle, [https://topostext.org/work/100 Politics] (III.11, 1281b), translated by Harris Rackham (1868-1944), from the Loeb Classical Library edition of 1944, digitized by the Perseus Project with support from the Annenberg CPB/Project and shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.</ref><ref>Hatzistavrou, A. (2019). Aristotle on the Authority of the Many: Politics III 11, 1281a40–b21. Apeiron. https://doi.org/10.1515/APEIRON-2018-0093</ref>

The concept of the ''wisdom of the crowds'' has its mathematical roots in {{wpl|Condorcet's jury theorem||,}} first formulated in 1785 by {{wpl|Marquis de Condorcet||.}} The theorem states that in a group making a binary decision, if each member has over a 50% chance of being correct, the probability that the majority decision is right increases with group size. Condorcet’s result shows that collective judgment can outperform individuals, though real-world applications may involve correlated or diverse participants, which can influence outcomes.<ref>Dietrich, Franz; Spiekermann, Kai, "Jury Theorems", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/jury-theorems/>.</ref><ref>O’Connor, Cailin; Goldberg, Sanford; Goldman, Alvin, "Social Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/epistemology-social/>.</ref><ref>Mongrain, P., Fréchet, N., Thompson Collart, B., & Dufresne, Y. (2025). Working the Crowd: Citizen Forecasting, Sophistication and Diversity in Canadian Federal and Provincial Elections. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 58(1), 68–94. doi:10.1017/S0008423924000465</ref>

A frequently cited empirical illustration of this principle comes from a 1906 observation by the statistician {{wpl|Francis Galton}} at a livestock fair in Plymouth, England, where attendees were invited to estimate the dressed weight of an ox. Although most individual guesses were inaccurate, Galton found that the aggregated estimate - particularly the [[median]], and also the [[Central tendency#Arithmetic Mean|arithmetic mean]] - was remarkably close to the true weight. This episode is often referenced as an early demonstration of how collective estimation, under conditions of diversity and independence, can yield highly accurate results.<ref>K. F. Wallis, “Revisiting Francis Galton’s forecasting competition,” Statistical Science 29 (2014), 420–424</ref>

===Situational success===
Some evidence suggests that this ''sort of'' works, but only in certain situations. Namely, situations where the knowledge required is very well defined. This can be seen in the game show ''Who Wants to be a Millionaire'', where a player can ask the audience for an answer out of 4 possible ones.{{efn|Or out of two if they've already chosen "50:50", but it still works out.}} Here, the audience can be split into two groups; those that know the answer, and those who don't. Those who don't know the answer will, in theory, select [[random]]ly, and on average, these answers will be uniformly distributed amongst the possible answers. This leaves the people who know the answer, who will choose the correct one and bring that answer above average. With the exception of circumstances where the answer may be part of a widely believed [[myth]] or the question is ambiguous ([[fallacy of ambiguity]]), the situation works out well on average and the wisdom of the crowd holds.<ref name="Jorm2025_A"/><ref>Pavlin Mavrodiev, Frank Schweitzer, The ambigous role of social influence on the wisdom of crowds: An analytic approach, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Volume 567, 2021, 125624, ISSN 0378-4371, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2020.125624. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437120309225)</ref><ref>Mann, R. P. (2023). Optimising collective accuracy among rational individuals in sequential decision-making with competition. Collective Intelligence, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/26339137231176481 (Original work published 2023)</ref><ref> Engert, Andreas, 'Collective Intelligence: Crowd Wisdom versus Herding', in Stefan Grundmann, and Philipp Hacker (eds), Theories of Choice: The Social Science and the Law of Decision Making (Oxford, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 Feb. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863175.003.0010, accessed 4 Jan. 2026. </ref>

===Situational failure===
The idea of "the wisdom of the crowd" does not hold where the knowledge is poorly defined.  An exact outcome, such as the "number of beans in a jar" discussed above, is very well defined, but the results of the lottery (which [[Derren Brown]] cheekily tried to claim he predicted using the "wisdom of the crowd" method) isn't, and thus isn't subject to the method.<ref name="Jorm_B"/><ref>Orzechowski, K.P., Sienkiewicz, J., Fronczak, A. et al. When the crowd gets it wrong – the limits of collective wisdom in machine learning. Sci Rep 15, 22139 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-08273-y</ref> Similarly, the ''Who Wants to be a Millionaire'' scenario works because the questions are on general knowledge, there are limited options, and enough of the population will be expected to know the right answer. If the answer was more open-ended or subjective or far fewer individuals would be expected to know the right answer — so few that their contribution would be statistically insignificant — then the system would fail.<ref>{{cite web |author= Michael E. W. Varnum Ph.D. |date= May 8, 2023|title= Learning From the Wisdom of the Crowd  |url=https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unserious-psychology/202305/learning-from-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd |website= Psychology Today |access-date=January 4, 2026}}</ref><ref>Keck S, Tang W. Enhancing the Wisdom of the Crowd With Cognitive-Process Diversity: The Benefits of Aggregating Intuitive and Analytical Judgments. Psychol Sci. 2020 Oct;31(10):1272-1282. doi: 10.1177/0956797620941840. Epub 2020 Sep 22. PMID: 32960747; PMCID: PMC7549292.</ref> The whole wisdom of crowds, therefore, falls short when the "crowd" in question is subject to [[groupthink]] or [[List of cognitive biases|other biases]], including a lack of specialist knowledge.<ref name="MannesSollLarrick"/><ref name="LorenzRauhutSchweitzerHelbing">Lorenz J, Rauhut H, Schweitzer F, Helbing D. How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 May 31;108(22):9020-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1008636108. Epub 2011 May 16. PMID: 21576485; PMCID: PMC3107299.</ref>

The lack of specialist knowledge in a crowd is one of the main factors working against "wisdom of crowds" having a universal application to open-ended or specialist questions.<ref name="MannesSollLarrick"/><ref name="LorenzRauhutSchweitzerHelbing"/> The majority population at large would not have the knowledge of atmospheric [[chemistry]], climate models, hydrosphere dynamics, or many other areas of knowledge to effectively evaluate the effects of [[climate change]] on the planet (this is one area where, say, Wikipedia's editing model is weak).<ref name="MannesSollLarrick"/><ref>Buncic, Daniel. (2016). Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. By Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. Risks. 4. 24. 10.3390/risks4030024.</ref> Indeed, when chess master {{wpl|Garry Kasparov}} played against "the world", he won.<ref>[http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/kasparov-versus-the-world/ Michael Nielsen — Kasparov versus the World.]</ref> Given that the only way to effectively implement the system in most circumstances is by vote majority consensus, what the majority may believe may not necessarily be right. The high prevalence of some [[urban legend]]s and [[conspiracy theories]] is certainly evidence of this.<ref name="LorenzRauhutSchweitzerHelbing"/><ref>Sunstein, Cass R. & Vermeule, Adrian (2008). Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (2):202-227.</ref>

==See also==
*[[Anti-intellectualism]]
*[[Balance fallacy]] — when two sides of an argument are assumed to have equal or comparable value regardless of their respective merits
*[[Countless counterfeits fallacy]] — assuming that if there's lots of bad evidence for something, there's also some good evidence
*[[Crowd psychology]]
*[[Democracy]]
*[[Elitism]]
*[[Groupthink]]
*[[Mobocracy]]
{{otherlang
|ru=Argumentum ad populum}}

==External links==
*{{wpa|Bandwagon fallacy}}
*[http://web.archive.org/web/20070410120630/http://www.cuyamaca.net/bruce.thompson/Fallacies/popularity.asp Appeal to Popularity], Bruce Thompson
*[http://www.fallacyfiles.org/bandwagn.html Bandwagon], [[Fallacy Files]]
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#AppealtothePeople Appeal to the People], Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
*[http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalfallacies/a/numbers.htm Argumentum ad Populum], Agnosticism/Atheism About.com
*[http://web.archive.org/web/20051101010306/http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/pop.htm Appeal to popularity], Stephen Downes
*[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/bandwagon Your logical fallacy is bandwagon], [[YLFI]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Anti-intellectualism]]
[[Category:Appeals to authority]]
[[Category:Conditional fallacies]]
[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Fallacious arguments]]
[[Category:Latin phrases]]
[[Category:Political terms]]
[[Category:Sociology]]

Categories: Anti-intellectualism, Appeals to authority, Conditional fallacies, Culture, Fallacious arguments, Latin phrases, Political terms, Sociology