Observational Selection

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Selective observations; counting the hits and ignoring the misses; searching for confirming instances; observer bias; publication bias.

Description

This error occurs along a broad spectrum, from individuals forming their own views on a subject of very little importance, to research into sensitive and complex social issues, and even "hard sciences" such as physics. At either end of the spectrum, observations are made by people and people have unconscious (and sometimes conscious) biases. These biases influence the observations people make.

When research is carried out by advocates of a particular viewpoint, the researcher has definite convictions about the importance of particular variables and for this reason, they may consciously or unconsciously tend to seek confirmation of their views in the data and ignore contradictory evidence. The advocate "observes", but only pays attention to information which seems to support their existing convictions.

Example

Jenny Frame is being interviewed on the national radio program Social Issues. The subject of the interview is her PhD research on "recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse". In the course of the interview, she states: "My research is designed to demonstrate that child sexual abuse is very widespread and that most victims repress their memories of abuse throughout their adult lives."

Comment

Jenny's description of her research indicates that she is seeking to "prove" a hypothesis, rather than to test it. Her approach to research is clearly partisan and biased. Policy-makers, lawyers or practitioners in the field of child protection could not safely rely upon Jenny's conclusions. She would be far more credible if she described her research in the following terms: "I am seeking to establish the nature and extent of child sexual abuse, and whether and to what extent the victims repress their memories of abuse throughout their adult lives."

This improved description of Jenny's research intentions is certainly more even-handed than the original description, but of course there is still no guarantee that her research will prove to be unbiased. Ultimately the credibility of her research can only be assessed by closely examining her methodology.

Observational selection can often be found in research programs. PhD candidates, for example, naturally frame a topic which accords with their current interests and convictions. They try to find a supervisor whose mind-set is compatible with their own. The thesis is also probably examined by academics who are sympathetic to the topic, methodology and findings. This is not to say that these lines of research are therefore flawed. Each would need to be treated on its own merits. (For a notorious case history of observational selection of this kind, the reader is encouraged to retrieve and read articles and/or books by Derek Freeman and others on Margaret Mead's anthropological fantasies in Samoa.)

Public enquiries about social issues conducted by panels of self-selected advocates are usually profoundly biased and hopelessly compromised. Campaigners for human rights are arguably the least suitable panellists for a disinterested, truth-seeking enquiry on human rights; judges are arguably the least suitable panellists for a truth-seeking enquiry on judicial powers; parliamentarians are arguably the least suitable panellists for a truth-seeking enquiry on parliamentary superannuation; developers are arguably the least suitable panellists for a truth-seeking enquiry on local government rezoning powers.

Observational Selection is not confined to flawed methodologies in formal research programs or public enquiries. Few individuals can even read a newspaper article without selectively attending to information which confirms their own biases. Casual readers of magazine horoscopes often see accurate predictions where none exist. Two bystanders present at a brawl between police and protesters will sincerely ascribe blame for the incident to different protagonists.

In any contentious situation, the seeker after truth will at least recognise the potential for biased observation, and will be wary about possible distortions of the truth, overstatement, exaggeration or outright fabrication by partisan advocates.

Naturalistic Fallacy

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Is/ought fallacy; Argument to nature.

Description

The advocate claims that because something is natural or exists in nature, it is by definition good. And/or the advocate derives 'ought' from 'is' without any compelling (and reasonable) link.

Example

Talk show host Grant Haggard has invited guest Riley Hardge on his show to discuss proposed gay marriage legislation. Hardge, attempts to bring up Haggard's recent arrest for public obscenity: "So Grant, you admit you were in the park that afternoon, and given you had binoculars I would normally believe you when you say you were bird watching. But why did witnesses see you in your van with your pants off?"

Haggard ignores the questions, turns to the camera and states: "The issue at stake here is the nature of family and life itself. Enacting this legislation would be commiting a crime against nature. The natural state of affairs is for marriage to be one man and one woman, so we can maintain the family unit. Look no further than the humble beaver. Both mother and father beaver have essential roles in the family unit. They mate for life and raise their young together, as a team. Just like humans do!"

Comment

Haggard's argument is wrong in two significant ways. The first, and most obvious, is that he has cherry picked one example from nature, from millions, to make his point. He has Stacked the Deck. One can demonstrate this easily by picking a fun counter example. Bonobos, for example, exhibit almost the complete opposite behaviour to beavers. They are overly promiscuous, engaging in opposite sex, same sex, and multiple partner sexual behavour, as frequently as humans shake hands.

The other way in which he is wrong is the Naturalistic Fallacy. Giving his example the benefit of the doubt, let's say that in nature homosexuality does not occur besides in humans. So? There is no compelling logic or link from the way things are (a description) to the way things ought to be (an ethical position). Haggard is essentially Begging the Question. He has presupposed that the way beavers live is good.

Another example of the Naturalistic Fallacy is the most basic argument in favour of Social Darwinism - a theory of societal ethics which claims its basis is in nature (evolution by natural selection - though it has a closer resemblance to selective breeding). Social Darwinists argued that if nature is this way (only the ‘fittest’ survive), then it ought to be this way with various features of society. (It has been mostly used as a justification for laissez-faire economics and eugenics.) But as with the previous example, this is an unfounded leap.

An argument in support of an ethical theory needs a better claim than, because something is done this way, it ought to be. This has nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong, good or bad. It is simply a statement of (supposed) fact. To get from a fact to an ethical value, there needs to be some kind of compelling argument about the ‘goodness’ or ‘evilness’ of the fact. For this to happen we need an agreed upon ‘good,’ and an agreed upon ‘evil’. (Note, this is a very simplistic treatment of Social Darwinism - and arguments not based on ‘is-ought’ with respect to the ‘goodness’ of laissez-faire economics and eugenics have been made by many.)

 

Moving the Goalposts

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Shifting sands; raising the bar; running for cover; red herring.

Description

The advocate changes the nature of the discussion by seeking to make the opponent tackle a more difficult version of the topic. The topic that was originally under discussion is recast and the new version favours the advocate. This tactic is often used when the backpedalling advocate feels that he or she is about to lose the argument. With the "goalposts" in their original position, the opponent would "score". But with the posts moved, the opponent's "shot" is now "off target".

Examples

1. Bella Donna claims that Sybil Antwhisper, her room-mate, is not sharing the housework equitably. Sybil tells Bella to go away and itemise and record who does what household tasks. If Bella can show that she does more housework than Sybil, then Sybil will mend her ways. A week passes and Bella shows Sybil clear evidence that Sybil does not "pull her weight" around the house.

Sybil (the advocate) responds: "That's all very well, but I have more work and study commitments than you do – you should do more housework than me... it's the total work of all kinds that matters, not just housework."

2. Three weeks out from the State Election, the Premier and Leader of the opposition are taking part in a televised debate. The issue in contention is the running of Public Hospitals under the current government. The Leader of the Opposition, Ken Oath, is making his point: "Under your government, the average waiting times in emergency rooms is four hours. Now that's just not good enough."

The Premier, Phillip Ingheck, replies: "I agree, four hours is clearly not good enough. That's what it was before we came into office. Under my government the waiting time has actually been reduced from four to two hours." Ken responds: "Well that's not the real issue anyway, it's waiting times for operations."

Comment

In the first example the implied agreement between Bella and Sybil at the outset was that the amount of housework done by both parties should be approximately the same. When Sybil was confronted by the evidence however, she quickly and unilaterally "changed the terms of the debate". She did this because the evidence was against her version of events and she was about to lose the argument on the issue as originally defined.

Whether or not it is morally right to count all forms of work when assessing household contributions is not the issue here. The issue here is that the ducking and weaving advocate (Sybil) is seeking to change the terms of the dispute to avoid a defeat on the original issue in contention.

In this situation, and if Bella is a skeptic and critical thinker, she would point out that Sybil was attempting to move the goalposts. She would insist that they resolve the original question as agreed, and that any further discussion or extension of the issue would have to be considered separately. If the issue had originally been defined as "total work" rather than "housework", then Sybil would have a point. As it is, her argument is weak and ethically suspect.

In the second example Ken realizes that he had initially used out of date information which did not support his case. Instead of acknowledging this, he attempts to change the focus of their discussion on Public Hospitals from emergency room waiting times to waiting times for operations. Phillip would be well advised to point this shift in focus out, and say that he is more than happy to discuss this new issue (waiting times for operations) once the first issue has been resolved.

Moving the goalposts can be avoided if both parties agree at the outset to clearly define the parameters of the discussion. Time spent doing this is time well spent. Otherwise discussions can become misdirected, frustrating and pointless.

Other Examples

Lots of squealing from the left… about Kerry Packer minimising his taxes. …But they’re wrong about Packer. In fact, he paid far too much. If anything, Packer was overly generous — every year he and his companies paid millions more than they needed to. Over his career, Packer possibly paid billions more than was strictly required... In wages. [Blogger Tim Blair defending former media tycoon Kerry Packer <http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/packer_attackers> Emphasis in original.]

Moral Equivalence

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Moral confusion; deceptive moral comparison; mendacious moral equivalence (also see sanctimony); false analogy.

Description

The advocate seeks to draw false comparisons between two phenomena which are not morally equivalent. The fallacy of moral equivalence is a strategy often used to denigrate an agency or entity by implying or stating that its policies or practices are as reprehensible as a widely (and justifiably) despised agency or entity.

An Example

Adam Polemicist is the third speaker for the negative in the Fooloomooloo High School senior debating team. He is attacking the third speaker for the affirmative who has just spoken. The topic of the debate is: "Asylum Seekers should be detained in a secure facility while their applications for refugee status are assessed."

Adam (the advocate) states: "So-called refugee facilities are nothing more than concentration camps. Just like concentration camps used by the Nazis, they are designed to break the will of the inmates while plans are made for their disposal."

Comment

At times this fallacy may be closely associated with another common fallacy – weasel words. If for example, Adam had just referred to refugee detention centres as "concentration camps" and left it at that, he would be using weasel words in an attempt to evoke an emotional response in the audience.However he has not just used this label – he has gone on to make an explicit claim of moral equivalence. He has asserted that the refugee detention centres are "just like" Nazi concentration camps. While there may be some superficial points of comparison between a refugee detention centre and a Nazi concentration camp, these would need to be made point by point on their own merits (and tested one by one by the skeptical opponent).

In the present example, the advocate's sweeping claim of aggregate moral equivalence is a mere rhetorical device which says more about his penchant for moral posturing than his grasp of the issue. It is worth noting that arguments to moral equivalence often employ the fallacy of false analogy. Adam's attempt to equate detention centres with concentration camps is a particularly egregious false analogy because he intended it to be taken as a literal analogy. Debunking opponents should explicitly repudiate instances of unjustified moral equivalence.

When egregious claims of moral equivalence are made between (say) the US Government and Nazi Germany; or between a labour union and Stalinist Russia; seekers after truth should not just reject the claim. They should address false moral equivalence as an issue in itself. It should be pointed out that those who are in the habit of claiming baseless equivalence are not primarily interested in solving problems or addressing issues – they are interested in winning an argument through the use of shallow rhetorical devices.

Thinking about this further, if the refugee detention centre example above truely was morally equivalent to a Nazi concentration camp, then there would in fact be no need to compare it to a Nazi concentration camp. Simply describe what goes on in the detention centre. If there are mass killings, why compare it to anything else? Just point out there are mass killings, and mass killings are bad. And thus we see why insincere advocates resort to moral equivalence. Without resorting to hyperbole, they have nothing to say.

An unfortunate by-product of the promiscuous use of the moral equivalence fallacy is the potential for moral confusion. For example, an individual who keeps a pampered pet cat indoors in a home unit might be castigated by an animal rights activist for confining the cat. The claim might be made that the confinement is "a form of torture". The activist advocate further claims that the cat owner is no better (in a moral sense) than a feedlot operator. The comparison is clearly inappropriate and unjustified – the cat owner knows this and so the argument is not persuasive. Further, the cat-owner would tend to be dismissive of any further points made by the animal rights activist, who otherwise might have made some excellent points regarding the treatment of animals in other contexts.

It's worth pointing out that occasonally one can find an example of a positive moral exquivalence that is fallacious. Usually it comes from an individual with an overinflated sense of self worth who chooses to compare themselves or their actions to some highly regarded person; Jesus and Gandhi seem to be popular.

The authors of this book have no doubt that their efforts in writing about fallacies and informal logic, continuing and extending the work of people such as Aristotle, Hegel, Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and Jesus, will quell such behaviour.

Other examples

'Most people in this room understand that slavery is not over in America or in the Western world or in the world in general. The animals are today's slaves.' Ingrid Newkirk, President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

 

Misuse of Information

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Misuse or misunderstanding of statistics; misuse or misunderstanding of facts and/or theories.

Description

The advocate misinterprets information (and the misinterpretation supports his or her position); or the advocate deliberately misuses information (a statistic, fact or theory) in order to support his or her position.

Example

1. Misuse of statistics

Scott Armani raises a delicate issue with his boss Phil Greenspan: "What am I going to do about the average wage of the employees in our third world factory for this report? We need to make it look like we pay decent wages."

Phil responds:e "Easy to fix. Just include the factory manager's pay rate and the average should come out nicely."

Following Phil's advice, Scott works out the average wage as follows. He uses data based on ten employees from the factory, including the manager. Their rates per hour are: $1.00, $1.00, $1.00, $1.00, $2.00, $2.00, $2.00, $3.00 , $3.00, $50.00. Thus the average wage for the factory as stated in the Annual Report will be $6.60 per hour.

2. Misuse of facts/theories

Karl Vladimir Eyemnotrite is the editor of the monthly Stalinist newsletter, We've Still (sort of) Got China, Cuba and North Korea. Writing in his usual opinionated style, he editorialises against the recent attempt to introduce laws to ban gay marriage.

"The problem with laws like this, is that they are judgmental. They tell us how to live. But we are in no position to judge anyone else. In order to judge, we must first be able to observe. Einstein showed us, with his theory of relativity, there are no privileged observers. Everything is relative. Quantum physics adds to this. The act of observing (or rather judging) changes the properties of things. So given these two fundamentals of physics – everything is relative, nothing absolute, and observations change what we are observing – how can we judge something like gay marriage if it does not harm us directly? The answer? We can't."

Comment

In the first example, Scott has not technically lied in his report, but he has used a statistical technique to create the impression the company prefers. The average chosen for the report is the mean. It is one of the three most common measures of central tendency – the others are the median and the mode. The mode of Scott's data range (that is, what most of their employees are paid per hour) is $1.00. The median pay, (the middle number when the data is arranged in ascending order) is $2.00 per hour. Through the selective use of statistics Scott (on the advice of Phil) has painted the picture he wants for the report.

In the second example, Karl Vladimir has cited two concepts of modern physics to back up his claim. These are theories of the physical world and say nothing about ethics or law. Thus they are being misused. In this book we do not take issue with gay marriage (what two or more consenting adults get up to and label it is entirely up to them), but we do take issue with fallacious reasoning, such as Karl's argument raised in his editorial, which misuses a theory and is therefore flawed.

The best defence for seekers after truth – against being deceived by the misuse of information – is to do their "homework" on the topic under consideration. This is only really possible if the general topic of discussion is known beforehand (in the case of verbal discussion), or if time is available for follow-up reading (when the misleading material is in a publication). If the misleading material is offered during a spontaneous discussion, in the age of internet enabled smartphones, a quick query on a search engine could be enough to call a sciolist's bluff.

That being said, the best recourse for the skeptic is to question advocates closely on the details of their claim, and to be alert for circular arguments, weak premises, unwarranted inferences and weak or unconvincing anecdotes. Close questioning often reveals that ill-informed advocates know far less about the topic than they claim to know. We have certainly found that at least 100% of those few people who routinely disagree with us know five eighths of three fifths of nothing at all about anything.

Other examples

"Quantum Scalar Energy Pendant is made from natural minerals that are fused and structurally bonded together at a molecular level. It produces scalar energy that helps to enhance the body’s biofield. Quantum Scalar Energy Pendant promotes positive flow of energy and helps to maintain energy balance. Mineral based high-tech formulated energy pendant, made from volcanic lava, using Japanese technology. Capable of emitting scalar energy instantly transforming bio-energy into our body to promote molecular activities of water molecules in body organs." Quantum Scalar Energy Pendant (http://www.sependant.com).

 

WTF? Fallacy

Other Terms and/or Related Concepts

Kook, Crank, Nutter

Description

The advocate puts forward a claim that is comprehensively and self-evidently flawed - a claim that is beyond flawed - it borders on the insane. Because the claim is so error ridden one would not actually know where to begin in trying to analyse it. The WTF?* Fallacy is only to be invoked when the claim under consideration is so lacking in any rational basis that one is left speechless with perverse admiration - how could anyone, in their right mind, make such an astonishingly stupid assertion? The only possible response is those three little words, muttered in hushed and awed tones: "What the F....?

Comment

Though similar in nature to Simple-Minded Certitude, the WTF? Fallacy is more extreme. WTF?ers ought to have seen the absurdity of their claim for themselves. There is simply no point in engaging with a WTF?er, as meaningful interaction will be nigh on impossible. Our advice is to completely avoid any interaction. If you must engage in social intercourse, a supercilious attitude is best, and moreover, such an attitude is completely justified. Heap nothing but scorn and derision upon the advocate.
A clue for spotting WTF?ers is that initially one would naturally assume that the deluded one was putting forth an absurdist joke. To which your natural response might be: "Good one mate... Hahahaha... That's a hilarious suggestion."But there will be no reciprocal jovial response from the WTF?er, merely a blank stare. A blank stare which should be met with raised eyebrows, and a comment such as: "Please tell me you're not serious?"
The WTF?er of course will continue to stare blankly... no data can ever enter that tinfoil-covered case-hardened skull.You should avoid drooling when your mouth reflexively drops open at this point. A shorthand way of describing your state at this moment of realisation is "gobsmacked". Take a step backward (for reasons of personal safety - at this point you realise you are not dealing with a rational human being after all), turn on your heel, shake your head, beat a safe retreat, and mutter: "What the Fuh...?"

Other examples

“I mean, one of the biggest problems that exists right now in the world is nuclear waste... That's something I've been involved with for a while with a group of scientists - finding a way to neutralise radiation, believe it or not... According to science, we aren't going to have a planet in about 50 years at the rate we're going with nuclear waste... I can write the greatest songs and make the most fabulous films and be a fashion icon and conquer the world, but if there isn't a world to conquer, what's the point?” Madonna (2006).
"I'm just wondering what the heck is in our water supply?... Of metallic oxide salts, that create a rainbow effect in a sprinkler? What is oozing out of our ground, that allows this type of effect to happen? ... This cannot be natural. We all know, it wasn't something that happened 20 years ago, but now it's happening now." A lady viewing the "rainbow" in her sprinkler, Youtube clip - Haarp's Rainbow Aerosol's [sic], July 6, 2007
"We used to have, in Atlantis, 12 strands [of DNA], and they're in the form of four triangles facing in, in each cell. And we forgot who we were in the experiment after Atlantis, and everything changed; reincarnation was introduced..." Elisis Livingstone, professional faith healer, in The Enemies of Reason.
* We are aware that there may be other interpretations of WTF?, however as far as we're concerned it stands for "What the Fuh…?"
Podcast on WTF? Fallacy http://ia700208.us.archive.org/3/items/HuntingHumbug101Episode1-WhatIsHumbug/18Tutorial18_Wtf_Fallacy.mp3