Bishop Hill A new logical fallacy?
Mar 6, 2008 Climate: other Via In the Green, this quote from the Baltimore Sun on the subject of the recent global warming sceptics conference in New York.
How many scientists doubt global warming? It's looking like it could be about 20 -- compared to the more than 2,500 globally who have reached the conclusion that climate change is really happening. That's pretty strong evidence of a scientific consensus. "The meeting was largely framed around science, but after the luncheon, when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so,"
This is clearly a nonsense. They are claiming that the sample is also the total of the population! I'm sure there must be a posh latin name for this fallacy, but having leafed through Madsen Pirie's "How to win every argument", I can't find it. Have I discovered a fallacy so daft that nobody has actually ever tried it before? Has the Baltimore Sun just plumbed a new depth in the annals of silliness?
We need to know.
Reader Comments (7)
All of these from http://logicalfallacies.info/
- The bandwagon fallacy is committed by arguments that appeal to the growing popularity of an idea as a reason for accepting it as true.
- The genetic fallacy is committed when an idea is either accepted or rejected because of its source, rather than its merit.
- Irrelevant appeals attempt to sway the listener with information that, though persuasive, is irrelevant to the matter at hand. (A consensus that climate changes is not the issue. The issue is whether it it man made.)
- An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.
- An appeal to consequences is an attempt to motivate belief with an appeal either to the good consequences of believing or the bad consequences of disbelieving.
- Appeals to popularity suggest that an idea must be true simply because it is widely held.
- There are two fundamentally different types of statement: statements of fact which describe the way that the world is, and statements of value which describe the way that the world ought to be. The naturalistic fallacy is the alleged fallacy of inferring a statement of the latter kind from a statement of the former kind.
- The red herring is as much a debate tactic as it is a logical fallacy. It is a fallacy of distraction, and is committed when a listener attempts to divert an arguer from his argument by introducing another topic.
- A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted.
- An argument is circular if its conclusion is among its premises, if it assumes (either explicitly or not) what it is trying to prove. Such arguments are said to beg the question. A circular argument fails as a proof because it will only be judged to be sound by those who already accept its conclusion.
- The complex question fallacy is committed when a question is asked (a) that rests on a questionable assumption, and (b) to which all answers appear to endorse that assumption.
- The cum hoc fallacy is committed when it is assumed that because two things occur together, they must be causally related.
- The bifurcation fallacy is committed when a false dilemma is presented, i.e. when someone is asked to choose between two options when there is at least one other option available.
- The Latin phrase “post hoc ergo propter hoc” means, literally, “after this therefore because of this.” The post hoc fallacy is committed when it is assumed that because one thing occurred after another, it must have occurred as a result of it.
- Slippery slope arguments falsely assume that one thing must lead to another.
- Accent fallacies are fallacies that depend on where the stress is placed in a word or sentence. The meaning of a set of words may be dramatically changed by the way they are spoken, without changing any of the words themselves. (Through sneaky wording, the statement intentionally makes it sound like only 19 people were present)
Some of these only indirectly relate to the statement above. I included them because the assumption of man-made global warming by it's very nature commits those fallacies. Still, it's an impressive list of fallacies for a single paragraph. They must have worked hard at that.
Yes, I don't think it was well attended by scientists. This doesn't change the fact that there seems to be a significant minority of around 25% or so who think that the IPCC is overstating things. This would seem to suggest that those who have trumpeted a consensus were, erm, mistaken.
What do you make of
a) Joanne Simpson coming out as a sceptic?
b) Nature Precedings and EOS refusing to publish the Pielke/Annan opinion survey?
As far as the Pielke/Annan survey rejection, it seems like a whole lot of huff about not that much. I haven't read the whole paper, nor seen the review comments, but it seemed like a reasonable study to undertake. Rejections can be for any number of technical arguments, and Nexus6 makes some good points about why it should have been rejected:
http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2008/03/rejected-conspiracy-no-pt-1.html
No doubt it'll all settle down, they'll edit the paper, and get it published in a decent journal.
I wonder how many others are keeping their mouths shut.
RP Sr. was a protege of hers, BTW.
Oops, found it now.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:7QrC5zUmECUJ:www.ucar.edu/archives/publications/simpson-joanne%2520interview.pdf+joanne+simpson+climatologist+1989&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=uk