Like all “fallacies” it’s not that they are useless, it’s just that you have to be aware of the traps. Even the best experts in an area often disagree, so you can’t logically deduce that expert says X means X is true.
However, it's perfectly fine to defer to an authority as a working hypothesis when you're not proving something, though - unless that authority does not have relevant expertise.
I think my point is probably better worded by https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority
> nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence.
But that does not dismiss that you're entirely right in that
> it is entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.
Deferring to relevant expert opinion is really the only thing you can do for the vast majority of things, since you can only be an expert in so many things. Unfortunately, "appeal to authority" is sometimes interpreted in a way so as to discredit authority in general.