Getting Duped

Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction.

Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse in Scientific American:

In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?

Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.

News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.

More here.

Comments

[Winfield J. Abbe]

The best way to avoid being duped by the media is to stop watching and listening to this garbage. Cancel your cable subscription or tear down your TV antenna. You might even increase the IQ of your children and yourself.

[Carlos]

Well(in fairness), all debate tends to focus on the weaknesses in the other side's argument. Strawmen are unfair, but pointing out weakmen is essential.

That Scientific American focused only on pointing out right-leaning examples is troubling to me (both sides do it, and most of the Media still leans left). Objectivity in scientific inquiry is essential. Politicization of a once respected journal is a sad thing to see. A recent SciAM article on a long ago extinction event that was posted here on 3QD did something similarly political. It implied that the cause was because of a warming directly caused by Greenhouse gases. Even though they had previously published that a geological event occurred that had covered an area the size of North America with lava (with associated other effects of that level of volcanic activity), they (apparently) could see no correlation, and felt it prudent to link it to our current circumstances.

I am depressed at this turn of events. One of my favorite mags has become a bit of a joke, in my eyes.

[Bob Talisse]

Carlos,

Hi. You've either missed the point, or committed the Straw Man. *Of course* argumentation aims to detect the weaknesses of one's opponent's arguments. No one could deny that. So the Weak Man must be focused on something different. And indeed it is. The Weak Man Fallacy is a violation of a discursive norm according to which one ought to take up with the *best* arguments one's opponents have to offer. When the Weak Man is committed, one takes up with the *weakest* arguments of one's opposition, and then implies that this weak argument is representative of (at least equal to) the strength of *all* opposing arguments.

[Carlos]

Still unclear Robert.

Could you point out one from the left side of the aisle? Maybe I could see it then.

[Bob]

Carlos,

That you think it matters for the clarity of the analysis of the fallacy that an example be provided of someone committing it "from the left side of aisle" is puzzling. Since we're talking about the violation of a dialectical norm, the content of the argument does not matter. One could commit the Weak Man Fallacy in an argument about anything at all (viz., it needn't be an argument about something political). Again, the fallacy consists in taking up with the weakest of one's opponents, refuting him or her, and then proceeding as if the weak opponent is representative of the whole of one's opposition. I don't know how this could be any clearer.

Perhaps the fact that this is not clear to you has to do with the fact that you mistakenly (seem to) think the content matters for the analysis? If you'd like an example, consider left critics of the war who take up with Hannity's arguments rather than Hitchens'.

[Carlos]

WE were talking about Dialectical Norms. I was also interjecting a persistent complaint about the loss of Scientific Objectivity of a once great magazine in the service of a partisan agenda. And in your new role, content and consistancy naturally matters a great deal.

And so in my snippy reply to your gracious one, I was referring to my previous complaint rather than the nuances of distinction between unfairly focusing on "weakmen" that do not support the opposing thesis, as opposed to revealing weaknesses in areas that the opposing thesis depends on for support.

What can I say. It was very early.

[Bob]

OK. I took you to be defending your claim above that "pointing out weakmen is essential." I take it now that you see that this statement involves an equivocation on "weakman," and that the Weak Man is legitimately a fallacy.

As for your concern about "Scientific Objectivity," I'm confused. It seems to me you're conflating objectivity with impartiality. That this (very) short, heavily edited, piece employs examples from what you see as one side of the political spectrum (but note that O'Reilly claims to be an independent, so take that up with him) does not suggest a lack of objectivity in the least. At best, it's a lapse of balance or impartiality. But, again, since the identification of a fallacy is necessarily concerned to show how a certain *form* of argument is fallacious, the content shouldn't matter to the analysis. But, you're right: in a longer, more detailed version of this piece, a greater variety of examples from a wide sampling of the political spectrum would need to be cited.

[Carlos]

Bob

Sorry for the late reply. I don't know if you are still reviewing 3qD for comments, but I was thinking about the limited set of demonstrations of your thesis and one of them caught my (finely tuned, if rather slow) ear again.

If this should turn out to yet another in my long list of esprits de l'escalier, so be it.

Your example of Horowitz using Churchill as an example of the "Weak Man" position seems to require that 1. no other confirming evidence is offered to extend the argument beyond Churchill, and that he is offered by Horowitz as the sole and sufficient proof of his thesis, and that 2. nobody else can defend such a thesis wihthout resorting to Ward Churchill for evidence.

Is this a fair observation?

If it is, as you say, a Weak Man, it would seem obvious that Churchill's liberal bias would have to be an outlier to the median position of Academia, since Horowitz' thesis is simply that there is a liberal bias in education.

In fact though, Horowitz offers far more in evidence than simply Churchill. He offers statistics of professorial self-identification, alleges advancement opportunities supported by additional evidence, claims of punitive grading against conservative grading, etc. Allegations all just as equally shocking, if not moreso than the behavior of some lame semi-psychotic ethnic-studies professor from Colorado.

Personally, I believe, on the evidence, that Academia does lean sharply left. Even though I do not lean that way for the most part, this does not surprise, dismay, or even interest me overmuch. It seems, instead, to be as it should be.

But a question. You seem to have, in reducing Horowitz' case to his most extreme example, and using that outlier in exclusion of all his other confirming evidence to debunk him, to have committed the "Weak Man" fallacy yourself.

Thoughts?

Liberal Bias acknowledged by Liberals

Debunking Liberal Bias--by Liberals (while acknowledging it at the same time(?))

[Carlos]

Measure twice. Cut once.

conservative grading should read conservative students

[Bob]

Hi. To point out that a given argument for a conclusion, c, is fallacious is not to prove that c is false. To say, then, that in one of his articles Horowitz employs the Weak Man is not to say that his conclusion is wrong. And it's certainly not to have "[reduced] Horowitz' case to his most extreme example."

Again, the "Getting Duped" paper is aimed at identifying a fallacy, so the content of the examples don't matter to the analysis. No judgment concerning his overall position can be inferred from the fact that he has committed the fallacy.

[Carlos]

Is this the offending editorial?

Feb6 9 2005 RMN

[Bob]

I don't know whether the editorial your link to is "offending"; but it does have Horowitz committing the Weak Man: Churchill's imprecise and clumsy arguments are claimed to represent a "substantial segment" of the academy.