A fallacy is an error in reasoning. It is a weak argument.  To be more specific, a fallacy is an “argument” in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support. By becoming aware of the most common fallacies, you can avoid them in your own speech and detect them when others use them. My goal here is to teach you to identify some of the most common fallacies and to make you a human fallacy detector.

I had someone ask me, “What’s wrong with fallacies, everyone uses them; in fact, it seems to help politicians get elected?”  Let me tell you what is wrong with fallacies.

• They distract us from the real issue.
• They “trick” us into faulty reasoning.
• They deceive us into believing bad conclusions.
• They keep us from having a good discussion of the topic at hand.

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The venerable tradition of respectful argumentation, based on evidence, conducted with courtesy, and leading to the greater exposition of truth is a precious part of our heritage in this land of freedom.
James Shannon, the youngest college president in the US. 

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There are many fallacies. Instead of overwhelming you with the large list, I decided to share with you the most common ones that occur in persuasive and political types of speeches.

Red Herring

A red herring fallacy gets its name from the sport of fox hunting. In foxhunting, riders on horses follow their dogs who are chasing a fox. Riders sometimes keep a fish, –a red herring–in their saddlebags. If they are ahead in the chase, they can stop and drag the fish across the fox’s scent and make the trail go a different direction. When the opponents’ dogs encounter the fishy smell, it distracts them from their mission of fox chasing.

A red herring fallacy occurs when a speaker distracts listeners with sensational, irrelevant material.  Sometimes it happens when the speaker changes the subject and sometimes it happens when the speaker brings up irrelevant information to the topic.  Why is this a problem? It is a problem because it sidetracks the argument at hand. It seeks to “win” an argument by diversion. Take this example, “We admit that voting to support school choice is a popular measure. But we also urge you to note that there are so many issues on this ballot that the whole thing is getting ridiculous.” The argument at hand is whether or not to vote for school choice but the speaker distracts us by bringing up the point that there are too many issues on the ballot. It may be true that there are too many issues on the ballot, but that doesn’t make the school choice something we should vote for or not.

In this video clip, notice how Senator Ted Lamar (R) distracts from the issue of background checks with the topic of video games.

The question: Can you envision a way of supporting the universal background checks bill?

Senator Lamar Alexander’s answer: Video games are a bigger problem than guns because video games affect people.

Yes, it may be true video games affect people but that doesn’t mean we should or should not have universal background checks. Bringing up video games is a way to divert the audience’s attention and to avoid the question. Smells fishy to me.

Slippery Slope

Oftentimes a speaker will argue one bad thing will result in many other bad things. This is done without proving these negative things will happen. A slippery slope causes the discussion to get off track.  If you are not careful, you will find yourself arguing the ending claim and miss the real debate. Consider this example. In talking about gay marriage, Republican candidate for Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch went down a slippery slope that led to tables and dogs. “At what point are we going to OK marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs?”

DirectTV made fun of the slippery slope fallacy in a commercial.

When talking about the removal of public statues, President Trump went down a slippery slope. “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder; is it George Washington next week, and is it, Thomas Jefferson, the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

In speaking about the Iraq threat, President George W. Bush said, “I’m not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein. Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear.”

Ad Hominem

An Ad Hominem fallacy is one where the speaker attacks the person rather than the point. There are four major forms of attacking the person:

Ad hominem abusive: Instead of attacking a point, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion.

Democrat Alan Grayson described Republicans as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who know nothing but ‘no.’”

Charley Reese from the Daily Iberian wrote, “That’s what abortion is – killing innocent humans for money. Abortionists are government licensed hit men.”

Ad hominem circumstantial: Instead of attacking the point, the person attacks the circumstances. They imply guilt by association.

Sara Palin, Republican Vice Presidential hopeful implied that Barak Obama was friends with terrorists. “Our opponent though is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

Ad hominem tu quoque: The attacker suggests the person is a hypocrite and because they are a hypocrite, you can’t believe any point they make.
When Al Gore was traveling to speaking engagement on the topic of global warming, he was criticized for traveling by private jet.  As President Obama was talking about gun control, speakers pointed out he was surrounded by secret service agents with guns. The argument itself should be discussed–gun control, climate change–the fact that the speaker may or may not be a hypocrite doesn’t mean the issue is right or wrong.

Poisoning the well: The speaker attacks the credibility of a person before they speak to bias listeners against the speaker. This fallacy is based on the belief that the enemy used to put tainted meat down into the town well so all the water that would come out of the well would be tainted and make people sick. The idea is that if a speaker taints a person’s credibility, then everything that comes out of their mouth is something harmful. Just because a person had poor judgment in one situation, doesn’t mean that they are incorrectly handling the topic at hand.

For a great overview of Ad Hominem, watch this short video.

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Post Hoc Ergo Prop​ter Hoc 

Talking to cashiers at fast-food restaurants causes obesity
(the more I talk to fast food cashiers, the heavier I get).
Author unknown

The fallacy here is the assumption that one thing caused another without proof of the link. When you study statistics, you will learn the phrase “correlation does not mean causation” which means just because two things seem to happen together, doesn’t mean that the one actually caused the other. Post hoc ergo propter hoc = after this therefore because of this and is a fallacy of false cause. Just because two things are consecutive, doesn’t mean that one caused the other. I do still believe that it rains every time I wash my car.

Sports fans have a lot of these– “my team lost Friday because I forgot to wear my lucky hat.” Speaking of hats, watch this scene from the West Wing as the “president” educates his staff about cowboy hats and fallacies.

Autism in children is often detected at the same ages as they are getting immunizations leading to the incorrect assumption that one causes the other. “Just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”  Donald Trump

That’s Latin for ’I’m old enough I should see a propterhoctologist”, right?
Mark Miller.

Faulty Analogy

Comparing things that are dissimilar in some important way

Former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee (R) said at a Freedom Summit that he is beginning to believe there’s “More freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States. When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position. People put hands all over me. And I have to provide a photo ID in a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane. But if I want to go vote, I don’t need a thing.” He was arguing why there needs to be government-required identification when voting but this comparison of airport inspection to a country with severe human rights violations is distracting and not a fair analogy.

“You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control.” Political candidate Ben Carson (R) at Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C.

Improperly used comparisons can be a problem.  Andina Wise in an opinion piece in Scientific American highlights that discussing military metaphors to fight COVID-19 undermines the practice of medicine. She highlights the wartime rhetoric using words that: Doctors are fighting on the frontlines without sufficient ammunition. They are battling the enemy and doctors from every specialty have been redeployed. They are at war. She warns that using wartime rhetoric sends a “precarious message.”. 

To adopt a wartime mentality is fundamentally to allow for an all-bets-are-off, anything-goes approach to emerging victorious. And while there may very well be a time for slapdash tactics in the course of weaponized encounters on the physical battlefield, this is never how one should endeavor to practice medicine.

Watch this video, it includes some powerful and relevant examples of false analogies.

Non sequitur

Non sequitur is reasoning in which principles and observations are unrelated to each other or to the conclusion drawn. Literally means “it does not follow.” If I mix red paint and green paint will never make blue paint, that’s not logical. Similarly, a non sequitur is not a logical conclusion of the ideas they are combining. 

“You know, education–if you make the most of it–you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” Democratic Senator John Kerry botching a joke about President Bush getting us stuck in Iraq

Hasty generalization

Drawing conclusions based on insufficient or non-representative observations.

People often commit hasty generalizations because of bias or prejudice. For example, someone who is a sexist might conclude that all women are unfit to fly jet fighters because one woman crashed one. People also commonly commit hasty generalizations because of laziness or sloppiness. It is very easy to simply leap to a conclusion and much harder to gather an adequate sample and draw a justified conclusion. Thus, avoiding this fallacy requires minimizing the influence of bias and taking care to select a sample that is large enough. Nizkor Project

Steve King assumes Mexicans are drug dealers: “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Representative Steve King, a Republican from Iowa making assumptions about immigrants from Mexico.

Herman Cain assumes Muslims are militants: “I would not be comfortable [with a Muslim in my administration] because you have peaceful Muslims and then you have militant Muslims, those that are trying to kill us. And so when I said I wouldn’t be comfortable, I was thinking about the ones that are trying to kill us, number one. Secondly, yes, I do not believe in sharia law in American courts. I believe in American laws in American courts. Period. There have been instances in New Jersey. There was an instance in Oklahoma where Muslims did try to influence court decisions with sharia law. I was simply saying very emphatically American laws in American courts.” Republican Tea Party Candidate, Herman Cain.

Either-or-thinking (Also Called False Dilemma)

 Framing choices so that listeners think they have only two options and one of them is obviously preferred. I saw someone with a shirt on the other day that said, “America, love it or leave it.” It set up only two options. What if someone mostly loves America, but doesn’t like the health care system?  What if they like America, but see that there is unfair distribution of wealth? What if they think another country has a better political system?  Setting it up like there are only two choices when clearly most things have many shades of gray is creating a false dilemma.

​”So, it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him – use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein – this is your last chance – disarm or be disarmed.” Hillary Clinton (D)

“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” George W. Bush (R) statement to Congress after 9/11.

We can either tax and regulate cannabis for adult use, reduce violence, and enrich our state, or we can continue a policy that enriches the cartels and has always has a racially biased pattern of enforcement. Ben Jealous candidate during a Democratic primary for Governor

“And the reason is because there really are only two alternatives here. Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through a force, through war.” Barack Obama (D)

Strawman

“Another well known, and much used, device
is to misrepresent my position
and attack things I have never said.”
Rachel Carson

Strawman fallacy is where a speaker belittles or trivializes an argument to refute them easily. The speaker cannot defeat the real issue so they frame the issue as silly –they make a straw doll–a fake argument that looks a little like the real one that is easily defeated. Often the issue they attack has a semblance of the real issue but is different in significant ways.

Consider this example, President Obama introduced a provision that would allow Medicare to pay for counseling on end-of-life issues if the patient asked for it. Doctors could counsel patients about end-of-life care issues such as living wills and hospice care. Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican said in a town hall meeting. “In the House bill, there is counseling for end of life. You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life, you should have done that 20 years before. Should not have a government-run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.”  Notice what happened, he changed counseling about end-of-life issues into pulling the plug on grandma. In this example, Grassly created the issue into something that sounds ridiculous and is easy to defeat.

1. So to say we’re going to basically outlaw coal, which is what this administration has done, is so self-defeating. it destroys jobs, it destroys communities, it’s not helping us, and it’s not helping global warming. Carly Fiorina (R) in an interview with Katie Couric. Why is this a strawman? Because this is not what the current administration has done, it is an exaggerated strawman that is easy to knock down. According to an article in VOX on this quote. “US coal has taken a beating from natural gas, renewables, and efficiency — the market, in other words — but it still provides more than a third of US electricity. And EPA expects that under the Clean Power Plan, that share will be at 27 percent in 2030. That estimate is probably high, given how uncompetitive coal has become, but even if it drops to 20 percent, that’s a fifth of US electricity and a long way from outlawed. “

I   think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day. And that’s not acceptable. Donald Trump said about Hillary Trump’s position on abortion at the final presidential debate. This mischaracterized her position.

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