Logical fallacies — Definitions & Examples

Attacking the person making an argument instead of the argument itself.

Drawing a general conclusion from a single story or personal experience.

Using a person's status as proof of a claim, instead of the evidence behind the claim.

Substituting an emotional reaction for an argument about the facts.

Treating the absence of evidence against a claim as evidence for it, or vice versa.

Treating how many people believe a claim as evidence that the claim is true.

Presenting only the evidence that supports your case and ignoring the rest.

Supporting a claim with the claim itself, dressed up in different words.

Using a word in two different senses within the same argument, as if they were the same.

Concluding that one thing caused another based on correlation or sequence alone.

Framing a choice as two options when more exist.

Treating two things as equivalent when they differ in ways that matter to the argument.

Judging a claim by its source, origin, or history instead of its content.

Drawing a broad conclusion from a sample too small or unrepresentative to support it.

Asking a question that smuggles in an unproven assumption the answerer can't address without conceding it.

Redefining a category on the fly to exclude counterexamples, protecting a claim about the category.

Assuming that because one thing followed another, the first caused the second.

Introducing an irrelevant topic to distract from the actual argument.

Claiming a small step will inevitably cause a chain of extreme consequences, without showing why.

Replacing someone's argument with a weaker version, then knocking down the weaker version.

Dismissing a critique by pointing out that the critic is guilty of the same thing.