Logical Fallacies

Red Herring: when the speaker skips to a new irrelevant topic in order to avoid the topic of discussion

Ad Hominem: a diversionary tactic of switching the argument from the issue at hand to the character of the other speaker

Faulty analogy: when an analogy offers an irrelevant or inconsequential comparison to the argument

Appeal to false authority: when someone who has no expertise to speak out on an issue is cited as an authority

Strawman: deliberately taking a poor or oversimplified point for refutation

Either/Or/false dilemma: when the speaker presents two extreme options as the only possible choices

Hasty generalization: a fallcy in which there is not enough evidence to support a particular conclusion

Circular reasoning: repeating a claim as a way to provide evidence, resulting in no evidence at all (You can’t give me a C (claim 1), I’m an A student (claim 2))

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: something is a cause of an effect because it just happened before the effect did

Ad Populum/bandwagon: if everyone is doing it, it must be a good thing to do