Saturday, February 16, 2013
FALLACIES & OTHER NONSENSE REGARDING ANIMALS IN LABORATORIES . . .
A) The appeal to popularity fallacy
"The vast majority of people support animal-based research. Hence such research is justified." This does not address whether the vast majority of people are correct. Recall that in earlier times, large numbers of people believed all sorts of things we now k now to be false, such as the once-held belief that the earth is flat.
B) The appeal to pity fallacy
In an appeal to pity fallacy, advocates of animal-based studies use descriptions of children with birth defects to argue that more money should be funneled to animal experiments involving the study of birth defects. Their argument ignores the question of whether or not animal experiments are efficacious in this context.
C) The fallacy of insufficient statistics
"Animal experiments helped prove that the heart pumps blood; therefore, all animal experiments are useful." Cherry picking data is another example of the fallacy of insufficient statistics. If you are presented with the results of 100 cases comparing animal outcomes with humans and you only include in your analysis the 10 cases where animals and humans shared the same outcome while ignoring the 90 times where they did not, you are cherry picking the data.
D) The straw man fallacy
The straw man fallacy is an argument made whereby a person misquotes, misrepresents, exaggerates, or otherwise distorts his opponent's argument so as to make it appear ridiculous and hence easy to disprove; like knocking down a straw man. Example: While animal activists say that animals are not predictive for human drug and disease response, an advocate for animal-based research will say that: "Animal activists really think that animals are far more intelligent than humans, that animals should be in charge of humans, and would rather save rats than babies. Therefore society should oppose them." Since this is not what the animal activist said, indeed is a gross misrepresentation of what the animal activist said, this is a straw man fallacy.
Full article can be found Here:
http://www.afma-curedisease.org/pdf/2010-11-04-fallacies-brochure.pdf
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