chap 5 Flashcards
In the run-up debate to the 2012 Republican primaries, Michelle Bachmann denounced Texas governor Rick Perry for issuing an order requiring Texas school girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus. In a follow-up interview, she linked the vaccine to mental illness when she told the store of a distraught woman who approached her after the debate claiming that the shot had left her daughter mentally retarded. Bachmann concluded with a warning that Perry was forcing young girls to receive “an injection of what could be potentially a very dangerous drug.”
questionable cause, small sample
The New York Times reported that Germain Greer, a well-known Australian feminist and literary scholar, quit the cast of Celebrity Big Brothers, a British reality shows, after only five days. On this program celebrities are confined in a house where they interact with one another while viewers vote on who should go or stay. Greer complained that contestants were encouraged to bully, living conditions were poor, food was stale, and towels were filthy. Even worse, she claimed that they were subjected to “lockdowns” in their bedrooms, where they were prohibited from eating, using the bathroom, or sleeping. When other contestants refused to join her revolt against Big Brothers thought police, she quit in disgust and denounced the show as a “fascist prison camp.”
questionable analogy
From a Bob Schwabach “On Computers” newspaper column: “There aren’t just a couple of brands [of IBM-compatible computers] for those [very low] prices; there are dozens. Do they work? Someone I know has been running one continuously for five months, and it’s never missed a beat.
small sample
During the wars in Afghanistan and Irag, the U.S. government placed a value on human lives that suffered wrongful deaths caused by U.S. military and made “condolence payments” to family members. They did the same for Americans killed in al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001. Here are some statistics on the worth of human life taken from “A Scale of Life,” by Tom Engelhardt. A civilian killed in Haditha, Iraq, by U.S. Marines: $2,500. A civilian killed near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, by U.S. Marines: $2,000. A civilian killed by al Qaeda terrorists on September 11: $1.8 million.
questionable use of stats
Smoking pot definitely leads to heroin use. A report by the U.S. Commissioner of Narcotic on a study of 2,213 hard-core narcotics addicts in the Lexington (Kentucky) Federal Hospital shows that 70.4 percent smoke marijuana before taking heroin.
hasty conclusion, questionable use of stats
In the Supreme Court’s hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, the question of whether people can legally be required to buy health care insurance or pay a penalty was argued at length. One reason in favor of the law was that the mandate simply regulates how people pay for healthcare services they are virtually certain to use at some point in their lives. To which Justice Scalia replied, “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food. Therefore everybody is in the market. Therefore you can make people buy broccoli.
questionable analogy
From a student essay: “It is wrong to criticize advertisers for manipulating people through psychological ploys because that’s what makes ads effective.”
hasty conclusion
Overheard in a local bar: “You women are wrong to be for censoring pornography, even if it’s true, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t, that porno stuff makes a few men more likely to rape. Would you want to ban miniskirts, bikini outfits, low-cut dresses, and such - require women to wear Muslim-style outfits - if it’s true that scanty clothes make some men more likely to rape?
slippery slope, questionable cause
Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist had this to say about women in politics: “If we had more women in politics this country would be farther ahead - because women are not afraid to ask for directions when they’re lost.”
questionable analogy, irrelevant reason
A disgusted baseball fan on hearing about Barry Bond’s alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs: “They ought to let him play ball. The next thing you know they’ll be taking away records from people because they had an extra bowl of Cheerios.”
questionable analogy
The president of a college who shall go unnamed her justifying the reduction of salaries for adjunct (part-time) teachers who are paid only 75 percent of the rate paid to full-time staff per course: “I don’t see the problem here, No other college in the state pays more than we do.”
questionable use of good stats, common practice
Comment in Time article by Tom Green, a self-proclaimed fundamentalist Mormon, who was indicted in Utah on four counts of bigamy: “Mormons say polygamy is immoral and wrong, but the church was founded by polygamists. That is hypocrisy.”
false charge of fallacy
Simon Cowell, of American Idol fame, commenting on Piers Morgan’s qualifications to replace Larry King as CNN talk host. “Piers is interested in people and that means a great interviewer.”
hasty conclusion
In a speech at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, Albert Gonzales, the president’s White House counsel, justified the second President Bish invading Iraq without a congressional declaration of war. When one officer asked how Bush could legally do this, Gonzales said that we had conducted 100 military actions in the past without a congressional declaration of war; furthermore, past presidents often declared war without a congressional declaration.
traditional wisdom, questionable useof good stats
Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker columnist had this to say about Fox News in his “Talk of the Town” article, the Debate Debate, February 13 and 20, 2012: TV journalism’s most pathological mutation, Fox News, propagandizes for the Republican right as faithfully, slickly, and humorlessly as Russian state TV does for Vladimir Putin.
questionable analogy, ad hominem
