Poetlister wrote:The logic is that you don't need to be an expert, since everything should be supported by a reliable source and experts need to cite sources rather than rely on their expertise. At first glance, that seems fair enough. The fallacy is that a non-expert may not know which sources are reliable, that sources need to be weighed rather than counted so a textbook by an accepted authority (other than the expert editor) trumps umpteen magazine articles by hack journalists.
Or, alternately, that a reference book of whatever sort, provided it is current enough to not be outdated, is probably better than most general sources, sometimes even including academic journals, for determining matters of weight and fringe. Unfortunately, particular for "interpretative" studies, like a lot of religion, the journals tend to sometimes have to publish "Lookee! I've got a new explanation for [x]", even if it is something that doesn't get any subsequent real support, because, well, there isn't that much to say on a lot of texts hundreds or thousands of years old, with no recent relevant discoveries, that might not have already been said hundreds or thousands of times.
