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Argumentum ad hominem, a well-known fallacy that involves attacking the character or motive of the person making the argument rather than arguing their claims on their merits, is frequently encountered, and despite being fallacious, it is disturbingly effective. A new study in PLOS One (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192025) sheds some further light on just how effective the various types of ad hominem attacks are in the context of scientific claims. An article from Psypost reports on the findings:
Ad hominem arguments — attacking a person to disprove his or her claims — is considered a logical fallacy. But a new study published in PLOS One suggests that some ad hominem attacks can effectively erode people's trust in scientific claims.
The research found that attacking the motives of scientists undermines the belief in a scientific claim just as much as attacking the science itself.
[...] "One key finding is that if members of the general public are aware of a conflict of interest connected to a scientific finding, then this will seriously undermine their faith in that finding," Barnes told PsyPost. "What the study does is allow us to quantitatively compare the amount of attitude change based on knowledge of conflict of interest to the amount of attitude change based on knowledge of outright research fraud and misconduct (such as faking the data)."
"What we see is that knowledge of conflict of interest is just as powerful as knowledge of research fraud."
Further commentary on the study by Orac at Respectful Insolence.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday February 16 2018, @02:32PM (12 children)
If logical fallacies didn't have a long history of being effective, then there wouldn't be any necessity of actually naming and explaining the things to people who want to make their thinking more rigorous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @06:05PM (2 children)
The law does not consider this to be a fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_impeachment [wikipedia.org]
Well there you go. It's good enough for federal court.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 16 2018, @06:50PM (1 child)
Correct, because the matter of fact that you're determining is the credibility of the witness.
It's when you claim something other than the direct matter at hand is wrong because of some unrelated issue with the speaker.
E.g. those satellite measurements are wrong because the scientist is a communist
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 16 2018, @10:06PM
When the communist scientist is presenting pollution data on capitalist cities, and for whatever reasons has omitted data on communist cities, and the data is used to support the argument that capitalist cities are inherently polluting and should be put under communist rule to rectify the situation, then, yes, the satellite measurements themselves may not be "wrong" but the totality of the presentation is misleading and it is likely traceable to the limitations within which the communist scientist is operating.
If the political limitations placed on the communist scientist are severe enough (e.g. falsify your data or your family will take a Siberian vacation), then the reasoning is completely sound.
For fair and balanced presentation, the same can happen to capitalist scientists (e.g. falsify your data or you may lose your Harvard tenure appointment and find yourself teaching at a post in northern Mississippi.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday February 16 2018, @07:13PM (8 children)
The thing is, while the logic may be fallacious, the reasoning is likely to be valid.
There's a long, long, history of people, some of whom were scientists, falsifying their data in order to prove what they want to prove. When you attack the motives of the scientist, you attack the trustworthiness of the data. And that's a valid attack.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday February 16 2018, @08:11PM (2 children)
Not really. The only reason you are attacking the credibility of the scientist is that you are incapable of refuting the data on its own terms. So this is a classic ad hominem.
Somewhere on the Internets, may even have been on SN, there was a classic explanation of what an ad hominem is,
Oh, it was SoylentNews:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=16556&cid=428738#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday February 17 2018, @11:56AM
But funding bias is still real. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday February 17 2018, @12:16PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Touché) by aristarchus on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:39AM (4 children)
Hey, HiThere, could you explain, in any way comprehensible to a thinking being, what is the difference between logic and reasoning, such that Logic could be fallacious, but the exact same reasoning would not? Truely, I will be in awe, if you pull this off.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:33PM
We don't know how native HiThere's English is.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:32PM (2 children)
Logic is based on assumed premises. If the premises are wrong, even if the logic is correct, you can't trust the conclusion.
People with an ax to grind have frequently been known to select, alter, or even fabricate the data to favor their desired conclusion.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:36PM (1 child)
But that is not a flaw in the reasoning, it is a deficiency of honesty? But accusing someone of dishonesty is in itself an ad hominem? You must need prove the data is purposely incorrect, rather than just casting aspersions.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:33AM
Sorry, but if I am deciding whether to trust someone or not, my evaluation of their bias figures into my decision as to whether to trust them. And this is proper.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.