In Applied Intelligence, a book that I co-wrote with Robert Sternberg and Elena Grigorenko, we include a chapter on Inference and Inferential Fallacies. I also teach these in my Critical Thinking Class. Some of these are fun, like the Ad Hominem Argument. Those are in essence (incredible simplification here) calling someone bad names or insulting a person instead of attacking their arguments. You can see this sort of thing in baseball stadiums a lot:
Phillies Fan: Yankees suck! Yankees fans suck!
Yankees Fan: Au contraire, my poorly arguing friend. You are committing the Ad Hominem Argument, and I am afraid it makes you sound like an ill-informed oaf.
The actual response may be a little bit coarser.
Others can greatly impact people's lives. The fallacy of the Ad Verencundiam Argument (aka Appeal to Authority) is to overvalue someone's position because of their status. I am reminded of Suzanne Somers' bestsellers. Her most recent bestseller, Knockout, argues that silly treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation are not working, and alternative, homeopathic methods are needed instead. She kicked off her book tour by ripping Patrick Swayze as he was being laid to rest for having the nerve to rely on proven medicine. Undoubtedly, thousands and thousands of people will read her book, believe in her authority (which rests on her status as a celebrity, not on her actual knowledge base), and reject scientifically-backed medical treatments in favor of unproven and potentially dangerous methods. My guess is that if she'd written a novel and laced the pages with cyanide she would have killed less people than she is going to with this current opus.
One fallacy we left out of our book (whoops) is Argumentum ad Metum (aka Appeal to Fear). We influence behavior or thinking based on scaring people, not based on logic, facts, proof, or evidence. I will leave the political implications to other, far wiser bloggers. I will conquer something that actual matters: Halloween candy.
How many readers have had Halloween candy taken away from them by their parents? Perhaps the candy was unwrapped or homemade. Even worse, entire bags might be confiscated (and eaten by the mother and father in private, I imagine). Why this nightmare? All because of the stupid Argumentum ad Metum. Parents have been fooled into thinking that Halloween candy is dangerous business. Visions of heroin sprinkled in caramel apples and arsenic in chocolates dance in a parent's head. Yet what's the truth?
As you can read in a nice wrap-up of the literature at snopes.com (always a one-stop shop for urban legends and myths), researcher Joel Best and colleagues analyzed all reported tampering cases from 1958-1984. They found 76 instances - nearly all of which were hoaxed perpetrated by the child or the parent. The two deaths that resulted were fabricated to look like a Halloween poisoning. In one case, a father purposely poisoned his son after taking out a large life insurance policy. In another case, a child accidentally found a relative's heroin stash and overdosed, which was then blamed on his Halloween candy. The initial headlines (Halloween Candy KILLS KIDS) were quite big. The eventual retractions were quite small. Since that study, I have only heard of one actual instance of a man sneaking needles into Snickers bars in Minneapolis in 2000 (no one was hurt). My strong guess is that the man came up with the idea of hurting children this way because of the hysterical media coverage. If your parents took away your Halloween candy any other time than post-2000, Minneapolis-area, then you were the victim of the Argumentum ad Metum.
So what's the truth? Judging from the facts, eating Halloween candy with common sense (and your fingers) seems pretty safe. Certainly it seems to be as safe as eating out in a restaurant, taking a bath, or crossing the street. If my blog has not convinced you, please do feel free to send me your unwanted and untainted candy to me, care of this website.
My next blog can be found here.
My last blog can be found here.
