Fallacies

Latin for "against the man." When a writer personally attacks his or her opponents instead of their arguments.

this fallacy occurs when evidence boils down to "everyone is doing it, so it must be a good thing to do"

This fallacy occurs when someone who has no expertise to speak on an issue is cited as an authority. A TV star, for instance, is not a medical expert, even though pharmaceutical advertisements often use celebrity endorsements.

A fallacy in which a claim is based on evidence or support that is in doubt.

a fallacy in which the writer repeats the claim as a way to provide evidence

A fallacy in which the speaker presents two extreme options as the only possibly choices.

a fallacy that occurs when an analogy compares two things that are not comparable

A fallacy in which a faulty conclusion is reached because of inadequate evidence.

The potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses in an argument. They often arise from a failure to make a logical connection between the claim and the evidence used to support it.

This fallacy is Latin for "after which therefore because of which," meaning that it is incorrect to always claim that something is a cause just because it happened earlier. One may loosely summarize this fallacy by saying that correlation does not imply causation.

A fallacy that occurs when a speaker chooses a deliberately poor or oversimplified example in order to ridicule or refute an idea

When a speaker skips to a new and irrelevant topic in order to avoid the topic of discussion.

An argument in which a conclusion does not follow logically from what preceded it.

A fallacy in which any evidence that supports an argument is rejected, omitted, or ignored

An argument that involves an irrelevant or highly exaggerated appeal to pity or sympathy

A type of ad hominem argument in which a person turns a charge back on the accuser

a fallacy in which the answer to a given question presupposes a prior answer to a prior question

a fallacy by which a key word or phrase in an argument is used with more than one meaning

A fallacy that assumes that taking a first step will lead to subsequent steps that cannot be prevented

Attempting to apply a general rule to a specific case when differences exist that militate against its application.