Examples of how fallacies can be used in argumentative writing.

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Ricky C. Camus / BSAT3-2 January 30, 2012 FallacyExamples from newspaper clips and magazines, book passages.Appeal to Misleading AuthorityThe only policy that effectively reduces public shootings is right-to-carry laws. Allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crime. In the 31 states that have passed right-to-carry laws since the mid-1980s, the number of multiple-victim public shootings and other violent crimes has dropped dramatically. Murders fell by 7.65%, rapes by 5.2%, aggravated assaults by 7%, and robberies by 3%. Explanation: These examples are the use of misleadingly precise numbers, specifically, "7.65%" and "5.2%" in the anti-gun control example. Especially in social science studies, percentage precision to the second decimal place is meaningless, since it is well within the margin of error on such measurements. It is a typical tactic of pseudo-scientific argumentation to use overly-precise numbers in an attempt to impress and intimidate the audience.Source: "Fact Card", Handgun Control, Inc.Complex Question"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone. "Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman, "That's the first question, you know."Explanation: A question with a false, disputed, or question-begging presupposition.Source: Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Ch. 6.Argumentum ad HominemOsama Bin Laden: …At the time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his right, they receive the highest top official of the Irish Republican Army at the White House as a political leader, while woe, all woe is the Muslims if they cry out for their rights. Wherever we look, we find the US as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world. The US does not consider it a terrorist act to throw atomic bombs at nations thousands of miles away, when it would not be possible for those bombs to hit military troops only. These bombs were rather thrown at entire nations, including women, children and elderly people and up to this day the traces of those bombs remain in Japan. The US does not consider it terrorism when hundreds of thousands of our sons and brothers in Iraq died for lack of food or medicine. So, there is no base for what the US says and this saying does not affect us.…Explanation:  Tu Quoque is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation.Source: "CNN March 1997 Interview with Osama bin Laden"Petitio PrincipiiTo cast abortion as a solely private moral question,…is to lose touch with common sense: How human beings treat one another is practically the definition of a public moral matter. Of course, there are many private aspects of human relations, but the question whether one human being should be allowed fatally to harm another is not one of them. Abortion is an inescapably public matter.Explanation: This argument begs the question because it assumes that abortion involves one human being fatally harming another. However, those who argue that abortion is a private matter reject this very premises. In contrast, they believe that only one human being is involved in abortion—the woman—and it is, therefore, her private decision.Source: Helen M. Alvaré, The Abortion Controversy, Greenhaven, 1995, p. 23.AccentAustralopithecus afarensis is the latest fossil hominid to be thrust before the public as the oldest evidence of mankind's existence. Not many (if any) have held the stage for long; by now laymen could be forgiven for regarding each new arrival as no less ephemeral than the weather forecast.Explanation: Kofahl quotes Reader as evidence of his claim that "fossil hominids" are discredited, but Reader's
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previous sentence makes it clear that he is saying only that it is the title to "oldest evidence of mankind's existence" that is ephemeral. In other words, still older evidence is discovered with sufficient frequency to make the title of "oldest" short-lived. This is no evidence at all supporting Kofahl's contention; in fact it is contrary evidence. By omitting the first sentence, the impression is created that Reader is talking about all "fossil hominids", instead of just the oldest ones. This false impression is reinforced by Kofahl's misleading editorial insertion in brackets of the phrase "fossil hominids".Source: John Reader, "Whatever ...

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