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Philosophy

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    No, it is not. This is exactly the case when an argument from authority is informally valid, especially when it is taken as strong evidence rather than absolutely conclusive. Such arguments are called defeasible rather than fallacious. That means that their conclusions can be overridden, but only if one has really good reasons for doing so (e.g. are themselves experts and/or have extra information unavailable to the experts).
    – Conifold
    Commented Sep 26, 2021 at 5:08
  • 3
    @Conifold: IMHO, it's the expectation that a community of experts must be infallible that is the fallacious reasoning here. See my answer.
    – Mozibur Ullah
    Commented Sep 26, 2021 at 6:06
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    There are risks of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink cognitive bias in the form of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect and other aspects of mass psychology.
    – CriglCragl
    Commented Sep 26, 2021 at 8:36
  • 3
    You ask for "the best" way to do X. But there are many criteria to take into account, and any solution will be a compromise between these criteria. One important criterion in programming is ease of understanding and maintainability. If everyone is used to one way of doing things, and you do it the same way, then your code will be easier to understand. In some situations, we have to pull obscure algorithms from research papers; but in most situations, we prefer to stick to well-known functions from standard libraries.
    – Stef
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 13:07
  • 1
    You seem to be assuming that because general users take the advice of experts, that therefore experts may only take the advice of other experts in their decision-making. I myself have been an expert in certain narrow technical domains and I assure you that that is not how experts work. They are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating new (and sometimes old) tools, technologies and techniques in the pursuit of better quality and productivity. That is in part what makes them experts.
    – RBarryYoung
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 13:43