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Misrepresenting the Facts |
| Description: | ||
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| The argument is based on incorrect information, i.e. the relevant facts presented in the argument simply aren't true. | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "Hundreds of postal workers have been killed by anthrax! To protect ourselves from terrorists, we should shut down the postal service and just use email. [As of this writing only six people have died from anthrax delivered in letters, and not all of them were postal workers. Postal workers actually run a greater risk of being killed in automobile accidents than they do of being killed by anthrax. Obviously, they should try to avoid both.] | ||
| "NASA should quit sending missions to Mars. All of the Mars missions have crashed or gone off course, so it is clearly just a waste of money." [In fact, while there were a few spectacular failures, most of the Mars missions have worked as planned and been reasonably successful.] | ||
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| Discussion: | ||
| This fallacy mimics good reasoning in the most direct
possible way. It draws valid conclusions from valid principles. It errs only
in drawing these conclusions from facts that just ain't so. Since we often
cannot distinguish correct claims from incorrect claims without checking,
examples of this fallacy look just like examples of good reasoning. Facts
are cited in good reasoning also. The fallacy of Misrepresenting the Facts
does not occur because facts were cited, but only because they were cited
inaccurately. Since
the exercises for a logic class are generally designed to be done without outside
checking, there will be no exercises for this fallacy. However, it
is important to realize that this is a frequently occurring fallacy, i.e.
one that will often be encountered in "real life." Indeed, I am quite sure
this is the single most common and important fallacy on the list, and that
it escapes the attention of logicians only because it is so difficult to
recognize without additional research and is generally considered to fall
outside the scope of logical theory per se. In recent years the most notorious practitioner of this fallacy has been Rush Limbaugh. It is perhaps a measure of the importance of this fallacy that he has wielded it so effectively. |
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| Classification: A Fallacy of Misrepresentation (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the minor premiss). | ||
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| Source: I had to name this one myself, since few logicians think to include this straightforward error on their list of fallacies. It is a boring and obvious name that I would gladly replace with something else, but at least it is descriptive of the error. | ||
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Go to: WELCOME EXPLANATION of PRINCIPLES TABLE of FALLACIES EXERCISES INDEX