(n.) Deceptive or false appearance; deceitfulness; that which misleads the eye or the mind; deception.
(n.) An argument, or apparent argument, which professes to be decisive of the matter at issue, while in reality it is not; a sophism.
Example Sentences:
(1) In March, the Tories reappointed their trusty old attack dogs, M&C Saatchi, to work alongside the lead agency, Euro RSCG, and M&C Saatchi's chief executive, David Kershaw, wasted no time in setting out his stall, saying: "It's a fallacy that online has replaced offline in terms of media communications."
(2) Once availed of the fallacy that athletes are role models, there’s a certain purity that feels almost quaint in an era of athlete as brand.
(3) It's a fallacy, because there is no such thing as 'the people'.
(4) In 2 experiments, representativeness was pitted against probability combination to determine the contributions of each to the fallacy.
(5) It is argued that Western science reductionist approaches to the classification of "mass hysteria" treat it as an entity to be discovered transculturally, and in their self-fulfilling search for universals systematically exclude what does not fit within the autonomous parameters of its Western-biased culture model, exemplifying what Kleinman (1977) terms a "category fallacy."
(6) Attempts have been made to avoid the fallacies with the introduction of quadrilateral and Wits analyses.
(7) Greater efforts to verify the characteristics of apparently discordant pairs than to verify those of apparently concordant pairs can result in the 'unequal ascertainment' fallacy.
(8) It's pure ad hominem (in the classic sense of the logical fallacy): "who is "Cornell [ sic ] West" to think that anything he says should be even listened to by "national security professionals"?
(9) For example, the fallacy is committed when a study contains the conclusion that TV advertising increases preference for sugar-based foods, but the reader later believes that the study concluded that TV advertising should be controlled.
(10) Typically, people get honours for their charity work, and I've never even agreed with that, since it tends to mean donations, which tend to proceed from wealth, and all it does is lock down and make flesh the fallacy that rich people are more honourable than everyone else.
(11) In our response, we place special emphasis on the fallacy of using nondiscriminating similarities between groups (e.g., suicidal ideation) as a basis for positing disease homogeneity.
(12) This is a good example of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc – “after this, therefore because of this” – fallacy.
(13) The author discusses the fallacy in the orthodox interpretation of Wolff's law, and suggests that a "resolution length restriction" be imposed on the trajectorial theory to avoid interpretations that lead to the fallacy.
(14) Simulation can validate a proposed policy, uncover fallacies of a proposal, or determine the sensitivity of the response to a policy change.
(15) being involved is the idea – and it is a core capitalist idea – that if you provide people with perfect information about a market you will be able to make perfect decisions, which is just fallacious in the context of higher education.
(16) The Lib Dem deputy leader, Simon Hughes, told the BBC that the no camp had conducted a "fundamentally fallacious campaign" which would affect the coalition.
(17) It is fallacious to assume that the conditions were worse in the past as it is fallacious to assume that they were better.
(18) Of course the polarisation of old and young rests on a fallacy, if not a downright lie: that all young people possess perfect skin and gleaming hair, have non-stop sex, are bursting with energy and are never lonely.
(19) Amniotomy followed by oxytocin infusion is advocated to simulate the progress of normal labour unless this is evident from an early stage.Oxytocin, the dose of which is limited only by foetal distress, cannot be used effectively unless three popular fallacies are rejected.
(20) While the error of indulging in fantasies such as the " Twitter revolution " and the collapsing Islamic Republic may be understandable, I wonder if the flawed logic that allowed for such fallacies is.
Specious
Definition:
(a.) Presenting a pleasing appearance; pleasing in form or look; showy.
(a.) Apparently right; superficially fair, just, or correct, but not so in reality; appearing well at first view; plausible; as, specious reasoning; a specious argument.
Example Sentences:
(1) Comment is perfectly legitimate, but the sneering, supercilious, specious and dismissive contributions masquerading as ‘commentary’ belittle the claims of a ‘quality’ paper.” Before attempting to assess the validity of the reader’s analysis – broadly shared by some other readers – I think his email reflects one or two other interesting aspects of the demographics of the Guardian’s readership and the left.
(2) Photograph: Da Capo Lifelong Books This is why I have no patience for anyone who insists that women must learn self-defense moves and memorize lists of specious advice to prevent our own victimization.
(3) To start with, despite my son's diagnosis, the local authority did what a lot of local authorities do, and refused to assess him, on the most specious of grounds.
(4) Please, get rid of the gimmicks – the faux-concerned and impersonal feedback loop and the specious “choice” paradigm designed to soften us up for privatisation – and listen to your frontline staff.
(5) And when you ask someone who’s passed along some specious “don’t get raped” tips or suggested a self-defense class to a woman concerned about rapes in her neighborhood what they were thinking, they’re likely to respond with something like “Better safe than sorry!” Translation: Even if what I’m telling you to remember is a pile of stinking horseshit, you should still engage in this ritualized expression of anxiety with me, because it makes me feel slightly better about things I can’t control.
(6) Roger Jones, editor of the British Journal of General Practice David Colquhoun's critique of my journal's peer review and editorial processes is based on a single table lifted from the main research paper, in which the detailed numerical data tell a somewhat different story, rendering his analysis partial and his conclusions specious.
(7) Dolezal’s specious claims to black ancestry and faux black identity could not have been sustained and she would not have been able to pass if black womanhood were seen and understood as more than skin – or weave – deep.
(8) On Monday, two Conservative chancellors, Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, accused Downing Street of publishing a Treasury document that amounted to propaganda , while one MP, Marcus Fysh, described it as “specious bollocks”.
(9) These two findings together predict that individuals known to have a marked PMR may have the diagnostic risk associated with these specious artifacts reduced by receiving diazepam before clinical ERG studies are begun.
(10) There is a creeping sense that this is turning into a cash cow for the private sector, a get-out-clause for the government ("we've spent all this money, if people can't get jobs despite our help, it's because they are inadequate"), and unemployed people will be left at the bottom, ceaselessly harassed by a totally specious narrative in which their laziness beggars a try-hard administration.
(11) Superficially it looks like the rightwing press falling into yet another fit of specious morality.
(12) Retrospectively applying the rubric of terrorism is specious.
(13) Boris Johnson trails his quest to return to the Commons – and obviously to become Tory leader – with the specious claim that the UK could have a “great and glorious future” outside the EU .
(14) P+ strains of serotypes 1b (two strains), 4b (seven strains), and untypeable (one strain) were isolated from nine Apodemus specious and one Apodemus argenteus.
(15) Asked about the attempt to destabilise his leadership, Clegg said: "I think it's odd, to put it very mildly, that any fellow Liberal Democrat should spend time and good money while the rest of us were out campaigning for these tough elections instead surreptitiously trying to come up with specious claims on the basis of polls, which were in any case entirely confounded by the election results.
(16) A number of arguments as to why aggregation produces spurious correlations are considered and shown to be specious.
(17) Further, as Prof Dimitro Godzinsky, of the Ukranian National Academy of Sciences, states in his introduction to the report: "Against this background of such persuasive data some defenders of atomic energy look specious as they deny the obvious negative effects of radiation upon populations.
(18) Four specious combinations of the mosquitos were distinguished as anthropophilic, sylvatic, meadow and marsh ones.
(19) It should reflect the seriousness of the crime committed and the magnitude of the harm suffered by the victim, and it is specious to argue that the child is not damaged most by the sexual abuse that took place in order for the image to be created.
(20) Ag-Gag laws have passed or are pending in nearly a dozen states , with Idaho's powerful dairy industry now the latest to use these specious legal arguments to hide unsavory practices.