[Clotho]

"Trusting your doctor when you are sick is not an instance of fallacious reasoning."

Nor is it an argument. It's an action based on a personal risk assessment.

If you said "The cancer studies are trash because my doctor says they are." Then you would be making a fallacious argument. Authority is only rational as a screening tool in the evaluation of large amounts of after information. It most definitely is not a proof.

[itafroma]

> Nor is it an argument. It's an action based on a personal risk assessment.

Concluding that something is the best course of action because an expert authority is, in fact, an example of the results of an inductive argument.

    P1: I am sick.
    P2: I have no knowledge of how to treat my sickness.
    P3: Knowing how to treat my sickness requires expert-level knowledge.
    P4: My doctor says I should take X to treat my sickness.
    P5: If my doctor is an unbiased expert whose opinion is representative
        of the medical community on my sickness, then what my doctor is
        prescribing is likely correct.
    P6: I have no reason to believe my doctor is not an unbiased expert
        whose opinion is representative of the medical community on my
        sickness.
    ------------------------------
    C:  If I follow my doctor's prescription, my sickness will most
        likely be treated correctly.

This is a valid argument, and not an appeal to or argument from authority. The conclusion is justified based on the premises provided.

One could, of course, discount any of the premises provided: for example, I could later find out that my doctor is a hack. If I do not then revise my conclusion or introduce new evidence to, then the conclusion would no longer be justified and the argument would become invalid.

> If you said "The cancer studies are trash because my doctor says they are." Then you would be making a fallacious argument.

If you make the claim that certain cancer studies are trash because your doctor says they are despite expert consensus indicating that they are, in fact, conclusive, then yes, your argument would be fallacious.

If, on the other hand, you make the claim that certain cancer studies are trash because your doctor says they are and it so happens that your doctor's position is representative of the oncology community as a whole, your argument would not be fallacious (or, rather, it would not be fallacious merely on the basis of an argument from authority).

> It most definitely is not a proof.

Informal fallacies, like the argument from authority, are indications of faults in an argument: they are not proof-enders, nor do they apply to proofs. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by saying an inductive argument is not a proof. No one could, or should, dispute that.