Ensure the Integrity of Your Argument

• A red herring is an irrelevant or distracting point. The term originated with the practice of sweeping a red herring (a particularly fragrant type of fish) across the trail being followed by a pack of hunting dogs to throw them off the scent of their prey. For example, the question Why worry about the rising cost of tuition when the government is tapping our phones? is a red herring (government surveillance has nothing to do with increases in college tuition).
• Ad hominem attacks attempt to discredit an idea or argument by suggesting that a person or group associated with it should not be trusted. These kinds of attacks might be subtle or vicious. If you hear someone say that a proposed wind farm should be rejected because its main supporter cheated on her taxes, or that school vouchers are bad because a principal who swindled a school district supports them, you’re listening to an ad hominem attack.
• Irrelevant history is another form of distraction. For example, arguing that a proposal is bad because someone came up with the idea while they were using cocaine suggests that the state of mind of the person who originates an idea has something to do with its merits. It might well be the case that the idea is flawed, but you should base your assessment on an analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, you might as well say that an idea is undoubtedly sound because someone thought of it while he or she was sober.

• Sweeping generalizations, sometimes known as hasty generalizations, are based on stereotypes. Asserting that the rich are conservative voters, for example, assumes that everyone who is rich is just like everyone else who is rich. These kinds of arguments don’t account for variation within a group, nor do they consider exceptions to the rule.
• Straw-man attacks oversimplify or distort another person’s argument so it can be dismissed more easily. Just as a boxer can easily knock down a scarecrow, a writer who commits this fallacy might characterize an opposing position as more extreme than it actually is, or might refute obviously flawed counterarguments while ignoring valid objections.
• Citing inappropriate authorities can take several forms: citing as an authority someone who is not an expert on a subject, citing a source with a strong bias on an issue, suggesting that an individual voice represents consensus when that person’s ideas are far from the mainstream, or treating paid celebrity endorsements as expert opinion.
• Jumping on a bandwagon, also known as argument from consensus, implies that if enough people believe something, it must be true. This type of argument substitutes group thinking for careful analysis. The idea of jumping on a bandwagon refers to the practice, in early American politics, of parading a candidate through town on a bandwagon. To show support for the candidate, people would climb onto the wagon.

• Stacking the deck refers to the practice of presenting evidence for only one side of an argument. Most readers will assume that a writer has done this deliberately and will wonder what he or she is trying to hide.
• Base-rate fallacies are commonly found in arguments based on statistics. If you read that drinking coffee will triple your risk of developing cancer, you might be alarmed. However, if you knew that the risk rose from one in a billion to three in a billion, you might pour another cup.
• Questionable analogies, also known as false analogies, make inappropriate comparisons. They are based on the assumption that if two things are similar in one way, they must be similar in others. For example, a writer might argue that global warming is like a fever, and that just as a fever usually runs its course on its own, so too will the climate recover without intervention.

• Post hoc fallacies, formally known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacies (“after this, therefore because of this”), argue that because one event happened before a second event, the first event must have caused the second event. For example, a student might conclude that she received a low grade on an essay exam because she argued with an instructor during class. In fact, the real cause might be the poor quality of her exam responses.
• Slippery-slope arguments warn that a single step will inevitably lead to a bad situation. For instance, one of the most common arguments against decriminalizing marijuana is that it leads to the use of stronger narcotics. Indeed, some heroin or cocaine addicts might have first tried marijuana, but there is no evidence that all marijuana users inevitably move on to harder drugs.
• Either/or arguments present two choices, one of which is usually characterized as extremely undesirable. In fact, there might be a third choice, or a fourth, or a fifth.
• Non sequiturs are statements that do not follow logically from what has been said. For example, arguing that buying a particular type of car will lead to a successful love life is a non sequitur.
• Circular reasoning, also known as begging the question, restates a point that has just been made as evidence for itself. Arguing that a decline in voter turnout is a result of fewer people voting is an example of circular reasoning.