Logical Fallacy of  Appeal to Common Folk / Plain Folks / Appeal to the Common Man / Argumentum Ad Populum

The logical fallacy of appeal to common folk occurs when a person tries to appear more like the people he or she is trying to convince of some conclusion rather than supplying true premises in support of the conclusion.

Examples of Logical Fallacy of Appeal to Common Folk / Plain Folks / Appeal to the Common Man / Argumentum Ad Populum:

Peter C Kjærgaard: "While secularists sleep well-funded creationists are on the march in Europe."

Those well-funded creationists fighting against the poor "REAL scientists" who only have billions of dollars in government grants and almost total control of every conceivable form of communication: public schools, all forms of media, and organizations similar to the ACLU.

“Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.”

This, from an Atheists blog, is typical of the logical fallacy of appeal to common folk. The argument is that the school board switched toward the liberal side, the anti-creation side, which is supposed to mean that creation is not popular in Kansas but evolution is popular. Popularity doesn’t prove the reality of anything.

The National Center for Science Education, Defending the Teaching of Evolution and Climate Science (global warming) posted an article titled “Polling creationism and evolution around the world. This article contained this quote: "A new poll conducted by Ipsos for Reuters News in twenty-four countries found that 41% of respondents identified themselves as 'evolutionists' and 28% as 'creationists,' with 31% indicating that they 'simply don't know what to believe,' according to a press release issued by Ipsos on April 25, 2011."

The article didn’t claim the polling information as an argument for the validity of the evolution story, but the fact that they thought it important to post it indicates that this is important to their argument. As a side not, there is also the quiet application of the logical fallacy of the question-begging epithet contained in referring to creationism versus evolution instead of putting the ism on both or on neither.