EXERCISE H: Mixed Inductive and Retroductive Fallacies
Identify the fallacy that occurs in each passage. These will be Inductive and Retroductive fallacies.
1. Did you see that automobile crash? The car was rear-ended by a truck, fell off the overpass and rolled over three times once it hit the ground. Yet the driver walked away without a scratch. You just can't explain a thing like that.
2. In a follow-up study of people diagnosed with ADHD, we noticed that our subjects who lived in the Seattle area had fewer colds than subjects who lived elsewhere. Since Seattle is known for its rainy weather, we conclude that wet weather helps prevent colds.
3. We're taking a survey. Which do you like better: our old roast turkey sandwich, or our new roast turkey sandwich with special seasonings, fresh-baked bread, and 10% more lean turkey breast?
4. Jannelle had an orgasm while making love to her boyfriend, and she got pregnant. So, if you don't want to get pregnant, be careful not to have an orgasm.
5. Nowadays anyone can buy a gun. If we had just had tighter controls on guns, tragedies like the Columbine massacre wouldn't have happened.
6. Young people today are less moral than just a generation ago. Clearly the breakdown of the traditional family has been responsible for this deplorable trend.
7. Our marketing department recommends that we not try to increase national sales by offering a mild-flavored taco. When we test-marketed the mild taco in Albuquerque, sales were flat and disappointing. Apparently the American public does not want a mild taco.
8. Books are filled with meaning: words, sentences and paragraphs designed to provoke specific ideas in the minds of their readers. Books have meaning only because they have authors. Well, the universe is also filled with meaning, so the universe must also have had an "author," namely God.
9. Reagan's policies were clearly responsible for the end of the Cold War. Just look at the sequence of events. First, Reagan increased defense spending; then the Soviet Union collapsed.
10. In-house studies showed that our company's drugs had fewer side effects (although we did have to use our own rats to get these results).
11. Did you see that automobile crash? The car was rear-ended by a truck, fell off the overpass and rolled over three times once it hit the ground. Yet the driver walked away without a scratch. That driver must live a charmed life.
12. You'd better not buy a white car. The white car that I owned was a real lemon.
13. We should teach physics just using hands-on experiments. Students will probably learn more if they don't have to deal with all that complicated math.
14. Did you see that automobile crash? The car was rear-ended by a truck, fell off the overpass and rolled over three times once it hit the ground. Yet the driver walked away without a scratch. That driver is being watched over by angels
15. Our company has two strains of genetically modified bacteria that produce a valuable drug, Atoxifed. We wanted to know which strain would produce the drug most efficiently, so we sent Strain A to our lab in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Strain B to our lab in Phoenix, Arizona (where, by the way, employees have been complaining about a defective air conditioning system). Strain B produced Atoxifed at a 10% higher rate than Strain A, so it is clearly the more efficient strain.
16. Spider poison can cure cancer. I heard of a case in which a terminally ill cancer patient was bitten by a tarantula and then recovered.
17. It was terrible when that sniper began shooting randomly into the crowd. When I was hit I began asking myself, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"
18. The Kennedy family had Marilyn Monroe murdered so she couldn't reveal her sexual relations with Jack and Robert, thereby destroying them politically. Of course, investigators deny finding any evidence for this, since Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General at the time, so he was able to suppress the evidence.
19. The recently discovered fossil of a hominid skull was found to be at least 4 million years old. That will force us to completely revise the timeline for human evolution. It could be the most important fossil find of the century.
20. A real scientist never comments on subjects that he knows nothing about. Yet, Linus Pauling is famous for promoting Vitamin C as a cure for the common cold, even though he knows nothing about medicine. He should have his Nobel Prize in chemistry revoked!
WELCOME EXPLANATION OF PRINCIPLES TABLE OF FALLACIES EXERCISES INDEX