Give an example of each of these fallacious reasoning practices identified in Carl Sagan’s Baloney
Detection Kit from one of our other seminar readings, or from current media, and explain.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
ad hominem argument
counting the hits and forgetting the misses (observational selection OR cherry picking data
special pleading
argument from authority
confusion of correlation with causation
Jaal Mann
1. On http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/07/morning-bell-four-ways-obama-has-blocked-job-growth/,
they attack Obama for causing economic problems instead of attacking the cause of the problems. It's a
lot easier to attack a president than to change our actual economic system.
2. On page 211, Crichton practices cherry picking data, by showing weather station near Antarctica with
declining temperatures and saying "There's your global warming." This one station doesn't mean
anything, but he shows it as a way to gradually persuade the reader that global warming isn't
happening.
3. On http://creationists.org/evolutionism-is-a-religion.html, they claim that evolution is false because
Jesus told them to trust him, not other humans. This is an example of special pleading, where there is no
real argument but they simply say that its this way because its this way.
4. On http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/07/27/both-sides-see-same-sex-marriage-aswinning-issue-in-2012, they report that Obama has not said publicly whether or not he supports gay
marriage, but that everyone assumes he supports it privately. People argue to reelect Obama because
they say he will legalize gay marriage, but he has not said he will do that, so the claim cannot be
evaluated.
5. In State of Fear on page 95, Crichton confuses correlation with causation when he implies that a 30
year section where CO2 went up and temperature went down means that CO2 does not cause
temperature to rise.
Clay Showalter
1) I have heard/read numerous people attack Al Gore's climate warnings by pointing out that he travels
by airplane and drives a car
2) Crichton was a master of this technique. He repeatedly employed it when selecting temperature data
that showed local cooling, confusing weather with climate and ignoring regional variability.
3) Special pleading is an attempt to bypass all rational analysis and often involves thinking within an
abstract framework. There are many examples of this, most notably among religious folk. (I know this
isn't an example, none immediately come to mind.)
4) In his Author's Message, Crichton seems to use his credentials to imply that his absurd conclusions
must be correct. This is especially clear when he says that from his experience, it is ridiculous to believe
in impending resource scarcity.
5)
Taylor Feldman:
1. "attacking the arguer, not the argument" 2. Crichton provided us many examples of cherry picking
data, as discussed during seminar. One is his characters' claims arctic ice actually growing, not receding.
He only discussed points that would help his argument. 3. "to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical
trouble" 4. Higher-ups such as the US government, as well Evergreen, prey upon their public appeal to
attend to their own sort of "Greenwashing." Environmental concerns are very much in the mainstream,
and politicians can get more votes if they advocate or publicly support environmental organizations. This
does not however mean that they will follow through with the change, as seen with the Obama
administration.
5. Global records of soil respiration of carbon has been on the rise, and it has been linked to the humaninduced rise of global temperatures. Therefore global warming causes soil to release more carbon.
Right? Wrong, though these might be connected in some way, it is not definitive evidence of a=b.
Nicholas Acorn:
1. Ad hominum: Science deniers and crichton use charges of corruption to discredit scientists whose
science they cannot argue with.
2. Counting hits/forgetting misses: Crichton did this in state of fear by cherry picking his weather data to
show relatively no warming.
3.Special Pleading: Todd Stern-U.S representative at the Durban climate talks- had to respond to the
widely held "misunderstanding" that his country was obstructing the conference, he said that people
saying such things don't fully understand the U.S position.
4. Argument from authority: I have heard the science of anthropogenic climate change defended by
statements that the majority of climate scientists (99%) believe in it. Is there a difference between
argument from authority and argument from an expert?
5.Confusion of correlation w/causation: Global warming is sometimes attributed as the cause of
extreme weather events. This is an example of confusing correlation with causation because it's very
difficult to show that global warming actually caused a particular weather event. Global warming has
been shown to cause a increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, but this relationship is a
merely a correlation to isolated weather events rather than a cause of them.
Reid Trevarthen
1. An ad hominem argument is one where a claim's reliability is called into question by highlighting a
negative trait about the person who made the claim. This is a fallacy because Hitler saying "The Earth is
round," does not make that claim false. An example from politics is Bill Clinton's affair. The claim is that
because he had an affair, he must be dishonest and therefore not a good leader.
2. Cherry picking occurs when you present ideas that agree with you while downplaying or omitting
entirely arguments that disagree. In State of Fear, during the mock Vanuatu trial, mainly it's the graphs
that debunk global warming that are presented. Many of them also only show data from more recent
years rather than showing all the data.
3. A good example of special pleading from State of Fear is given when on many occasions, climate
science is portrayed as a science so complex that no one could ever understand it. Yet, Crichton uses
principles of climate science to prove that global warming is not happening.
4. This is equivalent to a parent saying "because I said so." Crichton cites climate scientists who disagree
with global warming and expects the reader to believe them based on their title.
5. In the great vaccination debate, the question of whether or not vaccines cause autism is still raging.
There are many reasons autism rates are going up including an increase in knowledge about the
condition. This doesn't mean that vaccines cause autism.
James Parker:
1. In Crichton's novel, the use of "ad hominem" arguments was very prevalent. He made the believers of
global warming out to be fools, and attacked their character, gender, and even weight.
2. Once again, Crichton nit-picked many specific facts to formulate an argument that would not pass
Sagan's "baloney" test. 3. To my knowledge, I can't remember coming across any sort of special pleading
in the sense that Carl Sagan had applied it. 4. We encountered arguments from authority in Hansen's
"Storms of My Grandchildren", specifically when Hansen was asked to speak at the White House. Many
of his statistics were met by opposition from Vice President Cheney. 5. Many people assume that
Climate Change can be observed from year to year weather outcomes, and draw assumptions about
Climate Change based on their observations ("We got more snow than ever this year, how can there be
global warming?")
Spencer M-H
1. Almost all the characters in State of Fear were themselves odd ad hominem arguments (even though
they were imaginary): The climate skeptics were attractive, the main conspirator was weasely, etc.
2. Crichton talks about urban heat islands and land temperatures in general without considering the
more informative ocean temperatures.
3. My own first essay specially pled that we should be able to argue the existence of anthropogenic
climate change in non-scientific terms, without any great justification why.
4. What first comes to mind is actually a reverse argument from authority: In Crichton's author's
message he just kept repeating that nobody knows anything about climate science and that it's just a
young, uncertain science all around.
5. Climate change critics can rightfully argue that any given hurricane can't be causally tied to CC, but
that doesn't mean that hurricanes and CC aren't strongly correlated.
Brian Leslie:
1. Ad hominem - Hanson argues that the Kyoto Protocol "was more about being seen to agree than
about actual action" (p. 80). It could be argued that in light of flawed policy countries don't actually have
to do anything to reduce emissions because their policies are not actually about achieving a goal -( or,
for example, that the politicians who backed the initiative have ties to renewable technology companies
and thus the protocol should not be followed)
2. Cherry Picking data - this was seen a lot in Crichton's State of Fear with Kenner using selected
information in an attempt to question the validity of global warming and climate change. However, he
only used information and sources that benefited his argument without addressing those that argued
against it.
4. Argument from authority - The one quote I loved was from Larry Summers in Bill McKibbon's Dep
Economy. '“There are no...limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to to bind any time
in the foreseeable future. There isn't a risk of an apocalypse due to global warming or anything else. The
idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.”' – Larry
Summers (former chief economist for the World Bank, president of Harvard, secretary of the treasury)
(p.24). This argument could be believed by many just because of Summer's role as the head of many
well known institutions.
5. Confusion of correlation with causation - Skeptics of global warming have pointed to the temperature
changes over the past century against the rise in C02 levels, arguing that one hundred years is not
enough time to define a relationship. There is the argument that just because c02 and temperature have
happened to rise together (correlation) it doesn't imply that one is the cause for the other (causation).
Arguments like this were made in Crichton's State of Fear.
Michael Karch:
Ad hominem argument: attacking the arguer not the argument. An example would be perhaps when Al
Gore called climate skeptics “flat earthers”.
Observational selection: counting the hits and forgetting the misses, such was my critique of the 2009
IPCC compendium with a map of the disaster areas of global warming but not any good examples so as
to support climate change.
Special pleading: to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble, when the heads of the department
of agriculture said that farmers should get big or get out. Meaning that efficiency and scale is the key to
food abundance, and yet the opposite is true.
Argument from authority: this answer is right Zita because I said so, trust me.
Confusing correlation with causation: I myself am guilty of this, before this class I thought climate
scientist were advocating that CO2 causes global warming (I considered myself skeptical of climate
science for this reason), when in fact all along they were stating that there is a strong correlation.
Arij Beebe-Sweet
1. I do this all the time myself when referring to republicans, sigh.
2. Fox news has been accused of this when talking about the immigration debate, picking information
that degrades immigrant standing in society.
3. In a way Bill Mckibben's arugments can be judged thusly given his travel all over the world discussing
global warming. His footprint is probably tremendous.
4. In Hansen's book he gives examples of this when talking about the political figures.
5. This is a tough one, something that is related, but not necessarily the cause of it. The Arab Spring has
been said to have been successful because of networking media, I think this is that kind of argument.
Zach Baugher:
The ad hominem argument is a daily occurrence on most of television's national news stations. From
CNN to FOX news, character attack is a useful means to defacing your enemy and their message. There
could be no better example of this I think than a Republican party trying to prevent a Democrat-ran
second term. Being the masters of spin, it’s truly a maddening sight to behold.
Michael Crichton wins the cherry picking award for this quarter. I had never read anything before that
skewed the truth in such creative ways, and to such great effect. Clearly Crichton achieves a dangerous
level of penetration as his fictional work convinced his fans with political power that he'd be an
authoritative speaker to government officials on the topic of climate change. In the case of State of Fear,
multiple data were presented as being from credible sources negating any warming, cooler
temperatures in a particular region over the last few years for instance, while the wealth of
understanding still stands in contrast to such anomalous instances.
Again focusing on the media machine, while I think most news media is left-leaning, they are not all
climate change aware. Special pleading occurs commonly in the words of pundits, accepting that the
climate is changing, but calling such changes 'acceptable' or in some extremes beneficial. One classic
example is the argument that global warming 'would be fine for us, a few degrees doesn't change
anything because the arctic is plenty cold.'
As I mentioned earlier I think this is one of the most fallacious of the reasoning practices we see today.
The success lies in drawing one into argument and away from common since reasoning. Mckibben
attacks the heart of the American argument machine in his book Deep Economy because the financial
machine is one of the most stubborn processes in the daily function of our nation. Those with money
and power are, especially on Wall Street, very prone to arguing without reason. I think it’s generally
understood that climate change could be mitigated given our fullest efforts, but some force field stands
in our path and this is a huge part of it.
The confusion of correlation with causation is another valuable tool to the spin masters of popular
media. One can make a correlation like that made between actual growth and expansion of certain
glacial systems despite claims of 'global warming' and the earth simply changing in unpredictable ways
as it always naturally has. While the causation is that the delay in earth's response to a changing
atmosphere allows some regions to still experience extreme cold, though the trend is most definitely
towards warming.