Three paragraphs to demolish an acclaimed Nobel prize winner! Congratulations! You should be put forward for yours.
From the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
"It is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, but instead was established 73 years later by a donation to the foundation from Sweden's central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, on the bank's 300th anniversary."
From the criticism section:
In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Prize banquet Friedrich Hayek stated that had he been consulted on the establishment of a Nobel Prize in economics, he would "have decidedly advised against it" primarily because, "The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."
Less important, but relevant note about the name: "Some critics argue that the prestige of the Prize in Economics derives in part from its association with the Nobel Prizes, an association that has often been a source of controversy. Among them is the Swedish human rights lawyer Peter Nobel, a great-grandson of Ludvig Nobel.[28] Nobel criticizes the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/nature1...
Sure, authority can be a useful heuristic for non-authorities, but is useless in argumentative reasoning, e.g. "X, who is an authority says Y, and so [therefore] Y is true".
But the reason for it being a fallacy is that this sort of argument doesn't provide evidence of any kind. Rather, it makes the assumption that it must be true, because the authority says so.
You got it. You should not have been downvoted above.
Jenny McCarthy and Dave Grohl's opinions on the effectiveness of vaccination are clearly as valid as my doctor's. Weighting my doctor's views above those is clearly a fallacy because debating rules.
I'm not saying that expert opinions don't have merit, I'm saying that expert opinions aren't logically true because they are uttered by experts.
I suggest you look a little more into these "debating rules" (logical fallacies), as they are basically old-timey resoning rules; i.e. popular and intuitive arguments that don't make sense.
P.S. As I recall, the Foo Fighters were mixed up in HIV-denialism, not anti-vaccination.
However, it's not an appeal to authority when someone is actually an authority on an established subject where it's possible to be an authority on that thing. Which is the case here.
Hope that helps!
Outside of high school debate clubs, it's pretty reasonable to consider the demonstrated expertise of people making claims. I tend to take the opinion of medical researchers about the relationship of HIV and AIDS over the opinions of members of the Foo Fighters and Thabo Mbeki, for example.
The opinion of an expert, in his area of expertise, backed by a career's worth of research, seems a little more likely to be correct than a random on the internet backed by nothing more that "nuh-uh!"