Technical issues aside, this has to do with systemic
bias, not so much
in Wikipedia as in the society in general. It is natural that as
society members we would bring our biases with us into Wikipedia. A
bias perhaps becomes systemic when no-one recognizes it as a bias; it
takes some dumb little kid to yell out that the emperor has no
clothes.
Objective truth has nothing to do with who is saying it. Many of us
who would write here have been around academic "experts" in the past,
and it is inevitable that some would have carried away a little of the
idolatry that comes from that association. One of the most frequent
idolatrous statements that I see is "IANAL". One should have surmised
that something was wrong 400 years ago when Shakespeare commented,
"First we'll kill the lawyers." Society abounds with stories of
lawyers and politicians (many of whom are lawyers) as thieves and
scoundrels, but incredibly we continue to defer to their expertise
with that short disclaimer.
Ec
Citation problem: the statement first we kill all the lawyers is made
by the leader of the brigands trying to spread chaos. It is usually
cited exactly reverse of the way intended.
As for appeals to authority, certainly a problem, but the solution is
to provide people with the ability to authenticate the information they
use.