Examples of how fallacies can be used in argumentative writing.
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
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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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 happened to Zinjanthropus?" New Scientist, March 26, 1981, p. 805.Converse AccidentIt's a story, say, about the New York City public schools. In the first paragraph a parent, apparently picked at random, testifies that they haven't improved. Readers are clearly expected to draw conclusions from this. But it isn't clear why the individual was picked; it isn't possible to determine whether she's representative; and there's no way of knowing whether she knows what she's talking about. Calling on the individual man or woman on the street to make conclusive judgments is beneath journalistic dignity. If polls involving hundreds of people carry a cautionary note indicating a margin of error of plus-or-minus five points, what kind of consumer warning should be glued to a reporter's ad hoc poll of three or four respondents?Explanation: This is the fallacy of generalizing about a population based upon a sample which is too small to be representative. If the population is heterogeneous, then the sample needs to be large enough to represent the population's variability. With a completely homogeneous population, a sample of one is sufficiently large, so it is impossible to put an absolute lower limit on sample size. Rather, sample size depends directly upon the variability of the population: the more heterogeneous a population, the larger the sample required. For instance, people tend to be quite variable in their political opinions, so that public opinion polls need fairly large samples to be accurate.Source: Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did", New York Times, 5/22/2005False AnalogyWASHINGTON (AP)--The only exterminator in Congress told his colleagues Wednesday that it would be a short-sighted move to ban use of chlordane and related termiticides that cause cancer in laboratory animals. Supporters of the bill, however, claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency was "dragging its feet" on a chemical that could cause 300,000 cancers in the American population in 70 years. "This bill reminds me of legislation that ought to be introduced to outlaw automobiles" on the grounds that cars kill people, said Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who owns an exterminating business. EPA banned use of the chemicals on crops in 1974, but permitted uses against termites because the agency did not believe humans were exposed. Chlordane does not kill termites but rather drives them away. Explanation: Representative DeLay attempts to argue against a bill banning chlordane by comparing it to a bill banning automobiles, but this analogy is very weak.Source: Associated Press, June 25th, 1987Slippery Slope FallacyIf today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers have the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honour, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.Explanation: An eloquent example of the causal slippery slope fallacy. In over seventy-five years since the Scopes trial, which Darrow lost, few if any of the horrors that he paraded before the jury have taken place.Source: Clarence Darrow, The Scopes Trial, Day 2AmphibolyAn adjective placed before two juxtaposed nouns is apparently the servant of either master. So "Fabulous Christmas Bargains" is taken to mean fabulous…bargains for Christmas, whereas "Continental Holiday Brochures" are brochures for continental holidays. It is no answer to say that commonsense will guide us to the right interpretation; bargains for a wonderful Christmas and continental leaflets for holidays are both real concepts. And what of the shop's apology based on "Temporary Assistant Shortage"?―is this a shortage of temporary assistants…or a temporary shortage of assistants (whether they are permanent or not)? It will be realised that this seemingly pithy form of expression is always technically open to two meanings, is sometimes actually so, and is occasionally bizarre….Explanation: A fallacy that results from a faulty sentence structure of any kind.Source: Basil Cottle, The Plight of English: Ambiguities, Cacophonies and Other Violations of Our Language (Arlington House, 1975), pp. 33-34. Red HerringThe most telling moment in last night's [State of the Union] speech came after the president noted that "key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year." In response, notes the New York Times, "some critics in Congress applauded enthusiastically." If Osama bin Laden watched the speech, one imagines him applauding too.Explanation: That Osama bin Laden might approve of the expiration of provisions of the Patriot Act does not show that American critics are wrong to also approve, since the reasons for their approval are different. Some Americans oppose parts of the Patriot Act because they believe that it infringes upon the rights of Americans without significantly helping to prevent terrorism. They may be wrong, but that doesn't make them an al Qaeda cheering squad.Source: James Taranto, "The al Qaeda Cheering Section", Best of the Web Today, 1/21/2004False PrecisionImplausibly precise statistics…are often bogus. Consider a precise number that is well known to generations of parents and doctors: the normal human body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Recent investigations involving millions of measurements have revealed that this number is wrong; normal human body temperature is actually 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The fault, however, lies not with Dr. Wunderlich's original measurements—they were averaged and sensibly rounded to the nearest degree: 37 degrees Celsius. When this temperature was converted to Fahrenheit, however, the rounding was forgotten, and 98.6 was taken to be accurate to the nearest tenth of a degree. Had the original interval between 36.5 degrees Celsius and 37.5 degrees Celsius been translated, the equivalent Fahrenheit temperatures would have ranged from 97.7 degrees to 99.5 degrees.Explanation: Occurs when numerical data are presented in a manner that implies better precision than is actually the case; since precision is a limit to accuracy,Source: John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (Anchor, 1995), p. 139.Argumentum ad HominemI wish it were possible for men to get really emotionally involved in this question [abortion]. It is really impossible for the man, for whom it is impossible to be in this situation, to really see it from the woman's point of view. That is why I am concerned that there are not more women in this House available to speak about this from the woman's point of view.Explanation: This is a common type of circumstantial poisoning of the well, which claims that men should either not make a judgment about abortion, or should keep it to themselves if they do. This illustrates the effect that poisoning the well tends to have, which is to forestall opposition in debate. It also shows the mistake underlying all poisoning of the well, since the sex of the arguer is irrelevant to the merits of the argument. No doubt one could always find a woman to advance the argument, whatever it is.Source: House of Commons Debates of Canada, Volume 2, November 30, 1979, p. 1920Begging the QuestionProbably the greatest American speech of our century was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's address to Congress on his return from Korea. Search all others, read this masterpiece, and you will recall what I mean. Many men are full of good language…. But a truly great speech requires not only superb language but great wisdom and great truth at a great moment from the heart of a great man…. Gen. MacArthur wrote this speech flying in the "Bataan" from San Francisco to Washington…and in longhand…. He could compose it because he understood it. He spoke the truth because he knew it…. This speaker's great calling was liberty. Events full of terror and sorrow were at hand. Here was the needed reminder to his countrymen that the people who were in this war all the way were our men who ennoble the high, sharp Korean walls and live on Heartbreak Ridge every day. And die. Here was prophecy as revealing as a beacon light…. Here was hope: the dedication that we will live in a world where those of us who are Americans can be proud…. Here was history tolling like an old and important bell: the mighty warnings that mighty America, once having entered this major war, must not let it end in impasse…. It was all spoken in less than 30 minutes and in 3074 words.Explanation: This is an example of how a passage can consist of loaded language and little else. In reading this, we learn a lot of trivia about MacArthur's speech: that it was written in longhand on the plane "Bataan" flying from San Francisco to New York, that it was 3074 words long, and that it took less than 30 minutes to deliver. However, none of these facts has any bearing on whether that speech is " probably the greatest American speech of our 20th century". Instead, we get a lot of evaluative and loaded language, but nothing to back up the evaluation.Source: Henry J. Taylor, San Francisco NewsRed HerringThe operation cost just under $500, and no one was killed, or even hurt. In that same time the Pentagon spent tens of millions of dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives on Viet Nam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Because nothing justified their actions in our calculus, nothing could contradict the merit of ours.Explanation: This is a very clear example of the fallacy. The terrorists tried to justify bombing the Pentagon on the grounds that the Pentagon had unjustifiably bombed Viet Nam. The gist of the fallacy is contained in the last sentence, which claims that the wrongness of the Pentagon's actions justified a similar wrong: "Wrong + wrong = right."Source: Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, from his memoir Fugitive Days, defending a bombing attack by the Weathermen on the Pentagon. Quoted in "Radical Chic Resurgent", by Timothy Noah, Slate, 8/22/2001.Appeal to PopularityEveryone is selfish; everyone is doing what he believes will make himself happier. The recognition of that can take most of the sting out of accusations that you're being "selfish." Why should you feel guilty for seeking your own happiness when that's what everyone else is doing, too?Explanation:Source: Harry Browne, "The Unselfishness Trap", from How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973).Appeal to pity"I know the exam is graded based on performance, but you should give me an A. My cat has been sick, my car broke down, and I've had a cold, so it was really hard for me to study!" The conclusion here is "You should give me an A." But the criteria for getting an A have to do with learning and applying the material from the course; the principle the arguer wants us to accept (people who have a hard week deserve A's) is clearly unacceptable. The information the arguer has given might feel relevant and might even get the audience to consider the conclusion—but the information isn't logically relevant, and so the argument is fallacious. Here's another example: "It's wrong to tax corporations—think of all the money they give to charity, and of the costs they already pay to run their businesses!"Explanation: Make sure that you aren't simply trying to get your audience to agree with you by making them feel sorry for someone.Appeal to ignorance"People have been trying for centuries to prove that God exists. But no one has yet been able to prove it. Therefore, God does not exist." Here's an opposing argument that commits the same fallacy: "People have been trying for years to prove that God does not exist. But no one has yet been able to prove it. Therefore, God exists." In each case, the arguer tries to use the lack of evidence as support for a positive claim about the truth of a conclusion. There is one situation in which doing this is not fallacious: if qualified researchers have used well-thought-out methods to search for something for a long time, they haven't found it, and it's the kind of thing people ought to be able to find, then the fact that they haven't found it constitutes some evidence that it doesn't exist.Explanation: Look closely at arguments where you point out a lack of evidence and then draw a conclusion from that lack of evidence.Hasty generalization"My roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and the one I'm in is hard, too. All philosophy classes must be hard!" Two people's experiences are, in this case, not enough on which to base a conclusion.Expiation: Ask yourself what kind of "sample" you're using: Are you relying on the opinions or experiences of just a few people, or your own experience in just a few situations? If so, consider whether you need more evidence, or perhaps a less sweeping conclusion. (Notice that in the example, the more modest conclusion "Some philosophy classes are hard for some students" would not be a hasty generalization.)Post hoc "President Jones raised taxes, and then the rate of violent crime went up. Jones is responsible for the rise in crime." The increase in taxes might or might not be one factor in the rising crime rates, but the argument hasn't shown us that one caused the other.Explanation: To avoid the post hoc fallacy, the arguer would need to give us some explanation of the process by which the tax increase is supposed to have produced higher crime rates. And that's what you should do to avoid committing this fallacy: If you say that A causes B, you should have something more to say about how A caused B than just that A came first and B came later.Slippery slope"Animal experimentation reduces our respect for life. If we don't respect life, we are likely to be more and more tolerant of violent acts like war and murder. Soon our society will become a battlefield in which everyone constantly fears for their lives. It will be the end of civilization. To prevent this terrible consequence, we should make animal experimentation illegal right now." Since animal experimentation has been legal for some time and civilization has not yet ended, it seems particularly clear that this chain of events won't necessarily take place. Even if we believe that experimenting on animals reduces respect for life, and loss of respect for life makes us more tolerant of violence, that may be the spot on the hillside at which things stop—we may not slide all the way down to the end of civilization. And so we have not yet been given sufficient reason to accept the arguer's conclusion that we must make animal experimentation illegal right now.Explanation: Like post hoc, slippery slope can be a tricky fallacy to identify, since sometimes a chain of events really can be predicted to follow from a certain action. Here's an example that doesn't seem fallacious: "If I fail English 101, I won't be able to graduate. If I don't graduate, I probably won't be able to get a good job, and I may very well end up doing temp work or flipping burgers for the next year."