As with a Red Herring, it can also be combined with an Appeal to Silence, with the target’s failure to reply fallaciously taken as evidence that a claim is true.ĭefense: When engaging someone, the main defense against a Red Herring or Smoke Screen is to stick with the original issue or subject and not allow the distraction to work. This could involve combining the methods: piling on complexities for the purposes of distracting the target and putting out so many claims and arguments that the target will be unable to reply. For example, someone might use a Smokescreen while engaged in a Gish Gallop. Of course, the Smokescreen does not provide a true defense and hiding something behind the rhetorical smoke does not prove or disprove anything.Ī Smokescreen can be used in conjunction with other fallacies. In this manner it functions like the military or police use of a smokescreen, to hide something (such as a ship or soldiers) from sight. In addition to the usual goal of distraction, the Smokescreen can be used as a defense.
When used in bad faith, the person knows they are trying to obscure the original issue in rhetorical smoke. They might not even realize what they are doing. Some people, such as philosophy professors, tend to pile on complexities and seeming irrelevancies without bad intentions. Like a Red Herring, a Smokescreen can be used in good or bad faith. The difference is that a Smokescreen involves piling on complexities and irrelevancies until the original issue is lost in the rhetorical smoke. Like the Red Herring, its intent is to distract attention from the original issue, and it can be used for the same reasons as a Red Herring. Fortunately, the tale is just relevant to the name, not the fallacy itself.Ī variant of the Red Herring is the Smokescreen. It turns out that this story is not exactly true. If the dogs were distracted, they would fall for a red herring and fail the training exercise. The story was that a stinky fish would be dragged across the trail of whatever the dogs were being trained to hunt. Like most philosophers, I told my students that the “red herring” name came from a technique of training hunting dogs. It can also be used with Appeal to Silence by asserting that the issue has been resolved because the distracted person is now silent on that issue. It can also be used with a Gish Gallop to distract the target as the galloping continues. For example, a Red Herring can be used with Moving the Goal Post to distract a target while the goal post is moved. The rhetorical Red Herring can be used in combination with other fallacies.
This is fallacious reasoning because diverting attention from the original issue does not resolve it. Premise 2: B, which is not relevant to A, is introduced as if it were relevant to A. Premise 1: Issue A is being discussed or argued. Presented as a fallacy of reasoning, it would have the following structure A person can also commit the fallacy in good faith by being unaware that they are leading the argument off topic. For example, a politician being questioned about a scandal might use a Red Herring to get reporters to switch to a different subject.Īs a bad faith fallacy, a red herring is an attempt to “win” an argument by diverting attention to another subject. This tactic is commonly used when a person wants to avoid an embarrassing, unpleasant or damaging subject.
Also Known as: Smoke Screen, Wild Goose ChaseĪ Red Herring is a rhetorical technique in which an irrelevant topic is presented to divert attention from the original issue.
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