Logical Fallacies You Should Be Aware Of, Part 1

Manipulation tactics and disinformation runs rampant in our media and politics these days, and it’s hard not to wonder if we would be in the position we’re in if everyone had been thoroughly educated on recognizing logical fallacies (and sprinkle in some common sense, too) at an early age.

Logical fallacies are arguments that may initially sound convincing or true, but are logically flawed and use weak reasoning that can easily be disproved.

Disinformation campaigns and propaganda rely heavily on logical fallacies to spread their message. If the information is false, their arguments in support of it are likely utilizing logical fallacies to keep you from finding that there’s no truth to their claims.

You can read more on misinformation and disinformation here >>

The Start of Our Logical Fallacies Series

We’ll be creating regular articles with logical fallacy definitions and examples, and also use these as a reference in future articles about propaganda and disinformation. It helps to be aware of logical fallacies so that you can recognize when someone is using them to manipulate you or the information they’re trying to present. Keeping aware of these types of arguments will also help you spot disinformation and propaganda faster.

Once you learn to recognize logical fallacies quicker in an argument, it makes it easy to disprove them with some basic critical thinking, reason, and common sense.

Below, we’ll tackle a few logical fallacies we saw used recently, with some current event examples. Real life examples are not as cut and dry as examples you may see when Googling logical fallacy definitions, so we’ll break down some simple examples and then real life examples to help you spot them better in the wild.

This week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went on CNN for an interview with CNN anchor Dana Bash. The discussion quickly became heated, while not many questions were directly answered. We’ll pull out a few clips and quotes from the interview as some examples of logical fallacies.

False Cause Logical Fallacy

This logical fallacy is also called, “Non Causa Pro Causa”, which in Latin means “non-cause for cause.” This is an informal fallacy where causation is assumed because an outcome followed an event, but it may just be correlation.

The false cause fallacy is when one assumes that if B occurred after A, then A must have been the cause of B.

To put it simpler, the fallacy assumes something caused something else to happen without adequate evidence.

A Simple Example:

I got really sick after eating at my girlfriend’s house. She must be a bad cook.

The reality is that there may be other variables that led to the outcome, like in this case, they may be other things the person ate that day or another reason the food may have made the person sick.

How to Counter This Fallacy

To argue against a false cause fallacy, it’s best to provide evidence that helps to prove that correlation does not equal causation.

A Real Life Example of a False Cause Fallacy:

The CNN Interview, timestamp: 0:21

RFK Jr.: President Trump, as you recall, wanted to end the lockdowns. I think the thing that did the most damage to our country was the lockdowns, the lockdowns that shut down 3.5 million businesses […] all of our churches, closed our schools […] And yet we have the worst outcome of any country in the world. We had the highest death rate from COVID as any nation on Earth.

Let’s break it down.

In this case, RFK Jr. is implying that because the US had the highest death rates in the world (B), the approach of lockdowns was the cause because it was ineffective (implied) (A).

However, this is simplifying the matter at hand and not taking into account other possible variables that could have affected the outcome, which in this case was that the US had [one of] the highest death rates from COVID in the world.

Dana Bash quickly refutes RFK Jr.’s assertion with other potential causes for the US having one of the highest death rates, explaining why the lockdowns may be more of a correlation than causation.

Bash: I’ve heard you say that before on the death rate from COVID. It’s not accurate because public health experts say that there is a combination of factors that went into that: higher rates of chronic illnesses, […] gaps to our healthcare system, and misinformation about vaccines that contributed to the higher death rates.

From there, RFK Jr. immediately jumps into another logical fallacy.

Appeal to Complexity Logical Fallacy

This is similar to another logical fallacy, the “argument from ignorance”. The appeal to complexity fallacy is when someone concludes that because they don’t understand something, it must not be true, the argument is flawed, or the outcome is improbable.

For both the appeal to complexity fallacy and argument from ignorance fallacy, you can refute them with the argument that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

A Simple Example:

Person 1: Forget the perfect sphere you see in textbooks—our planet is actually an oblate spheroid, bulging at the equator and flattened at the poles due to the centrifugal force of its rotation. This subtle distortion affects Earth’s gravity, influences ocean currents, and even impacts how satellites maintain their orbits.

Person 2: That sounds made up; I don’t think that’s true.

Just because a concept is complex does not mean it’s not true, and complexity of an argument is not a reason to reject it.

How to Counter This Fallacy

Provide evidence or clarify the claim. If your audience fails to understand your argument, don’t blame the audience; explain your argument differently.

A Real Life Example of an Appeal to Complexity Fallacy:

The CNN Interview, timestamp: 1:12

RFK Jr.: But you just said what I said was inaccurate. What I said was accurate. We had the highest death rate from COVID. You can argue about why we had that, but nobody can tell you.

That last sentence is the example of an appeal to complexity, because he is dismissing Bash’s claim that other variables may have contributed to the high death rates.

“But nobody can tell you” is his claim that it’s too complex to know, yet Bash has sources with evidence in front of her. There have been studies that have been done to pinpoint likely contributors to the US’s high death rates from COVID. Unfortunately, it’s his job to know about this data, but moving on…

We’ll skip ahead a bit in the interview for the next one.

Courtier’s Reply Logical Fallacy

The courtier’s reply fallacy is when criticism is dismissed by claiming that the critic is not an expert on what they’re talking about or that they’re not qualified to critique the topic.

This fallacy’s name comes from the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. It is referring to the courtiers who dismiss the child who points out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes by saying that the child does not understand fashion.

This can also be referred to as the Emperor’s New Clothes Defense or expertise gatekeeping.

The key to this fallacy is that it dismisses critique of a claim rather than responding with evidence to back up the claim.

A Simple Example:

Person 1: What you’re claiming about vaccines doesn’t have any evidence to support it.

Person 2: I don’t see your medical degree. Talk to me when you complete medical school.

How to Counter This Fallacy

A quick way to counter this fallacy is typically to ask for an explanation of the “expert’s” claim, in plain terms. If they are truly the expert on the subject, they should be able to provide a clear explanation.

Person 1’s medical degree or lack thereof is not a sound argument for Person 2’s case. Person 2 would be best to provide the evidence for their claims that Person 1 is saying doesn’t exist.

A Real Life Example:

The CNN Interview, timestamp: 15:28

At this point in the interview Bash is asking RFK Jr. about new studies his department is working on to link autism to vaccines. She asks if they are also working to figure out what predispositions may lead to having an autistic child.

Bash: Are you also trying to find out how [sic] it interacts with people’s DNA, what’s predisposed to have an autistic child? Are you doing both?

Bash is raising the concern that the department’s studies may be skewed if they are not looking into other causes of autism like genetic predispositions or DNA, and are instead only trying to prove their hypothesis that autism is linked to vaccines.

Bash is critiquing RFK Jr.’s studies into autism by pointing out their potential methodological flaws. His response:

RFK Jr.: You probably don’t understand this because you’re not a scientist.

The correct approach would have been simply to answer the question directly about whether or not they were conducting thorough studies into the causes of autism. Instead, his response was to discredit her by attacking her credibility on the subject, as a move to establish himself in the right and to discredit Bash’s point she was attempting to make with her question.

Her experience as a scientist or not was not relevant to the exchange. She demonstrated this with her retort: “Well you’re not either.”

Yes, we know he immediately jumps into yet another logical fallacy, but we’ll leave it at that.

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Subscribe For Our Series On Logical Fallacies

We have at least two more articles for this series where we’ll cover formal and information logical fallacies, including some common ones and some lesser known fallacies.

The more you learn about logical fallacies, the more you’ll notice them in the media and politician’s speeches, and it’ll help you pick out misinformation and propaganda easier.