Authority laundering
Borrowed institutional language makes claims feel settled without showing the evidence.
When someone says 'experts say' or 'officials confirm' without naming the experts or showing what they actually said, they're using institutional authority as a laundry service — the claim comes out looking authoritative even though no authority actually backed it.
Truth-adjacency
Truth-independent — the pattern works regardless of whether the claim is true
Department
Covenant of Final Harmony (CFH)
Engine Signals
The engine detects these phrases and patterns:
experts sayofficials sayaccording to authoritiessenior officials say/believe/warnintelligence suggests/indicates/confirms How to recognize it
The phrase arrives before the evidence. “Experts say” does the work that showing the experts’ work would do. The authority is borrowed, not demonstrated.
What to ask
- Which named authority is being used to carry the claim, and what evidence do they actually provide?
- What changes if the appeal to expert status is removed and only the factual record remains?
What it looks like when you’re wrong about it
You call out “authority laundering” but the source actually named their experts, linked to the study, and showed the methodology. That’s sourcing, not laundering. The pattern requires the authority to be vague or hidden.
Misuse Guardrails
How this pattern gets misused
A conspiracy theorist calls a fact-checker 'authority laundering' because the fact-checker cites verified experts. The vocabulary gets reversed — naming real experts becomes 'laundering' while unnamed 'sources' get treated as honest.
What it looks like when you're wrong about it
It's only authority laundering when the authority is unnamed or vague and the evidence is not shown. Citing a named expert with a documented methodology is not authority laundering — it's sourcing.
Related Patterns
The name is designed to spread. The hook is designed to stick. If you recognized something, share the name.