30 Flaws of Argumentation
Not astronomical as such, but pseudoscientific argument is a tactic of those who use spurious astronomy.
What follows is due to Dr Rory Coker of the University of Texas, posted by one of his students on USENET in November 1994, and used here with his kind permission. Dr Coker has also written this aid to the exposure of pseudoscience.
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We have not tried to list here every type of fallacious argument, logical fallacy, and flaw of argumentation found in pseudoscience (ps) books, but have simply listed the ones most commonly encountered.
1) Error of fact: Ps books contain large
amounts of factual error, pointing to carelessness or indifference rather than
honest mistakes.
Examples: 'No one knows how old the Pyramids of Egypt are.' 'Is it
coincidence that the area of the base of the Great Pyramid divided by twice its
height gives the celebrated figure pi = 3.14159?'
2) Contradiction: Because of the carelessness
and indifference to fact in most ps books, one part of the discussion often
contradicts another part directly.
Example: 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes in his autobiography that he
never saw a ghost.' (p. 59) 'Sir Arthur's firs encounter with a ghost came
when he was 25, surgeon of a whaling ship in the Arctic...' (p. 200).
3) Deliberate creation of mystery; exaggeration;
distortion; omission: This includes deliberately leaving out important
details, explanations, results of investigation, later confessions; any fact
that could shed light on something the author wants to make mysterious. Also
very common is creation of completely fictitious details that make a rather
ordinary incident extremely mysterious.
Example: A book on 'sea mysteries' or the 'Bermuda Triangle' might
tell us about the yacht Connemara IV found drifting crewless Southeast of
Bermuda on September 26, 1955. None of these books mention that the yacht had
been directly in the path of Hurricane Iona, with 180 mph winds and 40-foot
waves.
4) Irrelevant data: Ps books frequently digress to
present chapters full of material that has not stated connection with the
supposed topic of the book. This usually suggests the author did not have
enough material for a book and has had to pad it out. This again usually
suggests the author did not really research or study the topic of the book, but
wrote it off the top of his head.
5) Failure to specify: Something extremely
remarkable is stated as a fact, but no reference or source is given and the
statement is not attributed to anyone, nor is it further discussed.
Example: 'A human skeleton 17 feet tall has been discovered at
Gargayan in the Philipines.'
6) Accepting hearsay as fact, or accepting myths and legends as fact: This is equivalent to (5), since no references are given by which one could verify the incident. Hearsay and myth have no acknowledged authors, and usually cannot be checked out.
7) Wild speculation: The writer begins with
hearsay and spins out a wild web of words, paragraph after paragraph, without a
single substantiated fact in the entire passage. This might be called 'winging
it'.
8) Irrelevant conclusion or non sequitur: Two
statements are made in sequence, as if one followed from the other, or the two
were directly connected; but there is no relation or connection between them,
logical or otherwise.
Examples: 'Tens of thousands of Americans have seen lights in the
night sky which they could not identify. The existence of life on other planets
is fast becoming certainty!' 'Science can't explain everything. We have to
take ghost stories very seriously.'
9) Argumentum ad hominem: This is a special
kind of non sequitur in which it is concluded that a person's ideas need not be
considered because of some personal characteristic which in fact is irrelevant
to the ideas under discussion.
Examples: 'Von Daniken's books about ancient astronauts are worthless
because he is a convicted forger and embezzler.' 'The contributions of Oscar
Wilde to literature cannot be taken seriously. He was, after all, a skeptic, a
cynic and a blatant homosexual.'
10) Appeal to widespread belief: The author
claims as evidence for the truth of an idea the fact that many people believe in
it now, or allegedly believed in it in the past.
Examples: 'Throughout all of history, until the advent of atheistic
science, all men knew through their instinctive kinship with nature that the
earth is flat, as it plainly is, as the evidence of all our senses so clearly
tells us.' 'Dozens of people have reported seeing the Lake Austin monster; how
then explain the indifference of the UT Austin Zoology department to a prompt,
thorough investigation?'
11) Failure to assert: This is one of the
most characteristic stylistic features of ps books. The sentences appear to be
saying something, but close examination reveals that the statements are
self-canceling or self-negating. The author backs out on his claim in the very
act of making the claim.
Examples: 'It may be, as some suppose, that ghosts can only be seen by
certain so-called sensitives, who are possibly special mutations with, perhaps,
abnormally extended ranges of vision and hearing. Yet some claim we are all
sensitives.' 'The story goes that when Bradford looked into the box, he found
hideous, mummified human head. Could this be possible? It is interesting to
ask whose head it might have been, assuming there was a head. Might this have
been the infamous head of the Marquis de Sade, about which so much has been
written and so many rumors seem to have spread throughout the occult community
over the centuries? Who can say, at this late date?'
12) Failure to follow up: The author
presents a claim that he could easily check out, but he does not do so. The
author presents initial reports about an incident, but not results of later
studies and investigations. The author presents inconclusive results and takes
no steps on his own to improve them or redo them, nor shows any interest in
the work of others who do progress in the same study. This is a standard ploy
in the deliberate creation of mystery, see (3).
13) Argument by analogy: Another very common
feature of ps books is the creation of an analogy which is then taken perfectly
literally and perfectly exactly. (The analogy is generally incorrect.)
Example: 'The solar system reminds me of an atom, with planets
orbiting the sun like electrons orbiting the nucleus. We know that electrons
can jump from orbit to orbit; so we must look to ancient records for sightings
of planets jumping from orbit to orbit also.'
14) Argument from spurious similarity: This
is very similar to (13) above. The author argues that since two things
resemble one another, no matter how superficially, they are related.
Example: 'An athlete taking steroids came to my health food store. I
got him off the steroids and onto swampsnake brownbitter root, because
swampsnake brownbitter root looks just like pictures I saw in some book of a
steroid molecule, but it is 100% natural instead of being some disgusting
artificial chemical, and will obviously have the same effects.'
15) Undue familiarity: The author seems to
have information that there is no possible way for him to get, on the basis of
his own statements.
Example: 'All hands were quietly asleep in their beds aboard the Sea
Ranger when the sun rose on that clear, fateful October day. The first man on
deck, seaman Don Smithers, yawned lazily and fingered his good luck charm, a
dried seahorse. To no avail! At noon, the Sea Ranger was found drifting
aimlessly, with every man of its crew missing without a trace! Not the
slightest hint of what may have happened to these missing men has ever turned
up, from then until the present day.'
16) Ignoring all plausible hypotheses: The
author uses almost any incident, no matter how commonplace, to support his
'theory'.
Example: 'Mrs. Bertie Catchings left her car in the shopping center
parking lot, and went shopping. When she came back an hour later, her car was
missing. What do the flying doughnuts from Arcturus about which I have written
so much here want with such battered old station wagons? In any event, we are
forced to conclude they flew away with it into the depths of outer space.'
17) Argument or explanation by scenario:
This is one of the most common features of ps literature, and seems to be one of
the most difficult features for students in this course to recognize. It is
related to (16) above, but works like this. The author tells a story that ties
together unrelated assertions, and then takes the story as proof that the
assertions are related! Explanations by scenario almost always blend concepts
borrowed from fantasy fiction and science fiction - which have no counterpart
whatsoever in the real world - with actual events, producing a long chain of
non-sequiturs.
Example: 'Police departments get many reports each year of missing
persons in all walks of life. What if doorways to other dimensions can open up
suddenly, without warning? You step through a doorway from your bathroom to
your living room, but it is actually a doorway for that one instant to another
world altogether, and you can never find you way back! Doorways to elsewhere
and elsewhen may be opening and shutting all around us all the time; this
certainly accounts for disappearances that would otherwise be so inexplicable.'
18) Affirming the consequent: This is
probably the most common of all logical fallacies, and results from confusion
between the deductive logic of mathematics and the inductive logic of science.
Example: 'If the earth orbits the sun, then the nearer stars will show an
apparent annual shift in position relative to more distant stars (stellar
parallax). Observations show conclusively that this parallax shift does occur.
This proves that the earth orbits the sun.' That the logic here is false is
clear if we look at an argument of identical form: 'If the University of
Oklahoma were in Texas it would be in the Southwestern Conference. The
University of Oklahoma is in the Southwestern Conference. Therefore, the
University of Oklahoma is in Texas.' The fallacy is to take a correct
statement of the form 'if P then Q' and reverse it: 'Q therefore P'. The
reversal is invalid. For instance, one could think of many hypotheses
consistent with the observation of stellar parallax that do not require the
earth to orbit the sun. Our choice of one particular hypothesis, that the
earth does orbit the sun, is based on the fact that it alone is consistent with
All that we know about astronomy and physics, from hundreds of years of
study... not that it 'explains' any one particular observation. Example: 'If
space creatures were kidnapping people and examining them, the space creatures
would probably hypnotically erase the memories of the people they examined.
These people would thus suffer from amnesia. But in fact many people do suffer
from amnesia. This tends to prove they were kidnapped and examined by space
creatures.' The relation of this fallacy to 16 and 17 should also be
obvious.
19) False cause, or subjective validation: This
is often found in ps literature and has been discussed in class extensively.
It is closely related to 10 and 18.
You read that Aunt Grannie's
Bitter Brickle Root cures dandruff. You try it and your dandruff goes away.
You now testify that Aunt Grannie's worked for you. In fact, no evidence
whatsoever exists that Aunt Grannie's preparation was the cause of the dandruff
condition going away.
20) Complex question: Another favorite trick
of pseudoscientists is to ask a question which, to answer, would take several
thick textbooks. The pseudoscientist then finds it significant that experts
cannot answer his question in one glib sentence!
Examples: 'How could a barbarian race like the ancient Egyptians have
erected anything so gigantic and magnificent as the Great Pyramid?' 'How can
scientists expect us to believe that anything as complex as a single living
cell - much less a bunny rabbit - could have arisen as a result of random
natural processes? It defies imagination.'
21) Sweeping generalization: Everybody
generalizes too much. Pseudoscientists generalize to an overwhelming extent.
Examples: 'Evolutionary biology is a sinister tool of the
materialistic, atheistic religion of Secular Humanism.' 'Scientists resented
the fact that Velikovski, a psychiatrist [sic], dared to speculate on astronomy
and archaeology... Above all, they resented the fact that his book was so
well written - most scientists are miserable writers.'
22) Appeal to authority: The author claims
as evidence for the truth of some statement the alleged fact that some 'famous'
person believed in the idea, or that some prestigious organization allegedly
takes the statement to be correct.
Example: 'Albert Einstein was extremely impressed by the ideas of
Immanuel Velikovski.' [A completely false statement, by the way.]
'Parapsychology cannot be a ps because parapsychologists are members of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.'
23) Appeal to false authority: This blends
in with 22, and involves calling on experts to testify in fields in which they
are not expert.
Example: 'Famous physicist John Taylor studied Uri Geller extensively and
found no evidence of trickery or fraud in his feats.' Taylor is 1) not famous,
2) not an experimental physicist, and not qualified to study phenomena in the
laboratory, 3) not an expert on mentalism or slight of hand such as Geller
uses. Where is the famous slight of hand expert who studied Geller and found
no evidence of trickery? No such person exists. [Taylor later admitted Geller
had tricked him, but never seems to have figured out how, even when shown by
magicians.] Example: Captain John Alexander 'found' a 'ruined city' on the
ocean floor near Bimini. We read further and discover that captain Alexander
is an infantry officer, has dabbled in the occult and taken Silva Mind Control
[a Scientology competitor] courses, has studied Buddhism, is an experienced
diver and is an expert in underwater demolition. He is not, however, familiar
with geology, oceanography or archaeology. Geologist, oceanographers and
archaeologists who viewed a similar site recognized it as a fairly common
natural formation, not a human artifact.
24) Appeal to sympathy, the Galileo argument:
The author wants you to know he's suffering for his beliefs... suffering all
the way to the bank where he'll cash his latest royalty check.
Example: 'I will be castigated and ridiculed by orthodox,
narrow-minded, mentally-inflexible scientists. Some may even call me insane.
But in the search for truth, many sacred cows must be sacrificed.' The Galileo
argument is a non-sequitur argument that because the author is being
persecuted [actually just ignored] by 'orthodox science', this proves his
claims are correct. Example: 'Scientists scoffed at Copernicus and Galileo;
they laughed at Edison, Tesla and Marconi; they won't give my ideas a fair
hearing either. But time will be the judge. I can wait; I am patient; sooner
or later science will be forced to admit that all matter is built, not of
atoms, but of tiny capsules of TIME.'
25) Innuendo: This is an invitation to the
reader to jump to a conclusion the author does not intend to ever get around to
stating explicitly.
Example: 'Why don't scientists tell us what they really know; the
incredible, secret discoveries about the human mind, our earth and the solar
system? Are they afraid of public panic?' The implication is that scientists
really 'know' ps is correct, but scoff at the claims for fear of the public
taking such 'dangerous knowledge' seriously!
26) Setup a false assumption: This is
closely related to 25. A preposterous statement is attributed to someone, or a
preposterous 'fact' is asserted, so that the writer can knock it down [a.k.a.
'straw man argument' (ST)].
Example: 'We find electric batteries many thousands of years old.
Archaeology accepts such mysteries as puzzles, and stops cold.' Example:
'Scientists say that the earth is billions of years old, as determined by
Carbon-14. But C-14 dating is notoriously unreliable. The earth could just as
easily be 10,000 years old as 10 billion.' [In fact, the half-life of C-14 is
5,730 years and it is used exclusively to date organic material from
archaeological sites a few thousands of years old at most. Our knowledge of
the age of the earth, or of any non-organic material, has nothing whatsoever to
do with C-14. Nor is C-14 dating particularly unreliable]. Example: 'How can
we continue to believe what archaeologists tell us: that the Maya were a simple
agricultural people with no knowledge of technology?'
27) Gibberish: Extensive use of an invented
vocabulary, or remarks that are incomprehensible... words stuck together
apparently at random. By being incomprehensible, pseudoscientists apparently
think they are imitating science, which they also find incomprehensible.
Example: From _No More Secondhand God_, by R. Buckminster Fuller, the king
of gibberish; 'Omniscience is greater than omnipotence, and the difference is
two. Omnipotence plus two equals omniscience. META = 2.'
28) Fallacy of composition: To argue that
the pieces of which a thing is made must have all the properties of the thing
itself.
Examples: 'Houses have windows and doors, even houses made entirely of
brick. So an individual brick must have windows and doors too.' [In case you
think this is too ridiculous to ever appear, even in a ps book, a man named
Teilhard de Charding spends about half of a famous crackpot book on speculations
based on the argument that, since human beings are made entirely of atoms and
nothing else, and since human beings are conscious, atoms must also be
conscious.]
29) Fallacy of Reduction: This, the reverse
of 28, is to argue that it is impossible for an object to possess any properties
that its pieces do not also possess. Both fallacies are frequently encountered
in Creationism.
Example: 'Scientists tell us that clocks are made of lifeless metal gears.
Poppycock! How could eternal, timeless metal possibly know of the passage of
biological time? There can be no doubt that clocks contain an immaterial,
spiritual component that is time-binding. Clocks are not merely gears and
springs. There MUST be something more - the ghost in the machine, the soul that
time somehow erodes.'
30) Appeal to ignorance, obscuratinism;
deliberate misrepresentation: This, alas, is probably the one most common
fallacy used in pseudoscience... and also the most successful. The author
claims that because he doesn't understand something, and the reader probably
doesn't either, it follows that NOBODY understands it. The author makes
statements that are completely wrong, expecting that the reader will never spot
the errors or check on the author. The author deliberately misrepresents or
obscures the known facts, assuming that the reader will not be aware of them.
Pseudoscientists use this ploy more frequently than they do any other. It is
related to 1, 3, 10, 20 and 26.
Examples: 'Scientists say that pyramid power doesn't work, by which they
mean they don't understand how it can work. Well, I don't understand how
electricity works, but I can still watch television! Do scientists REALLY know
what electricity is, anyway? Or do they just take it on faith, the way I take
pyramid power.' 'Just before Captain Thomas Mantell's fighter plane crashed,
just after he was told to intercept a flying saucer, he radioed that he was
closing on an object that was 'metallic and tremendous'. He then screamed that
'a ray' was flashing out. Those were his last words... the whole case is
impossible for the skeptic to explain. They say he was chasing Venus... or
they say he was chasing a weather balloon. But Venus and weather balloons do
not shoot down fighters!' 'Science cannot explain the almost miraculous feats
of psychic D. D. Home. In front of five unimpeachable witnesses, including
Viscount Adair, he levitated unsupported into the air and hung there. He then
floated feet first out of a third story window, passing over the traffic of a
busy street, and then feet first back into another window in the adjacent room.
He violated all the laws of physics, but there is no more doubt he did
perform this miracle than that the sun rose that morning.' 'All of the fossil
evidence conclusively proves exactly the opposite of what scientist claim. The
fossils say that evolution is a fraud, that kind does not change into other
kind, that fungus doesn't evolve into human. There is not a shred of fossil
evidence for evolution. What is more, the fossils unmistakably demonstrate the
reality to the Biblical Great Deluge, those 40 days of upheaval when in fact
most 'fossils' were created.'
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