False attribution
The fallacy of a false attribution occurs when an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased, or fabricated source in support of an argument.
A more deceptive and difficult to detect version of a false attribution is where a fraudulent advocate goes so far as to fabricate a source, such as creating a fake website, in order to support a claim. For example, the “Levitt Institute” was a fake organisation created in 2009 solely for the purposes of (successfully) fooling the Australian media into reporting that Sydney was Australia’s most naive city.[1]
A contextomy is a type of false attribution. Another particular case of misattribution is the Matthew effect: a quotation is often attributed to someone more famous than the real author. This leads the quotation to be more famous, but the real author to be forgotten (see also: obliteration by incorporation).[2]
References
- ↑ Deception Detection Deficiency, Media Watch.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Quoting Out of Context Fallacy Files.
- Humbug! The skeptic’s field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking – textbook on fallacies. False Attribution (p56).
| Correlative-based fallacies | |
|---|---|
| Fallacies of illicit transference | |
| Deductive fallacies | |
| Inductive fallacies | |
| Questionable cause | |
| Vagueness / ambiguity | |
| Equivocation |
|
| Question-begging fallacies | |
