Monday, January 10, 2011

Find the Fallacy #1

A news commentator (who shall remain nameless so I don't get into a political fight here)  started off his show recently by putting down newspapers as sources of information you can rely on.  His complaint was that you can't trust a newspaper when one article on the front page stated that the economy was definitely on its way up while the headline on a second article on the same front page indicated that the economic recovery had stalled.  He allowed that over time conditions change so that articles from papers a week  apart could reasonably differ.  But how can you trust a paper which contradicts itself on one page?!

Is there a fallacy here?  Is the commentator correct?

If you answered yes; no, at least  you agree with me.  Perhaps because he is a news commentator, this man is confusing fact with opinion.  This is a somewhat non-intuitive example where facts actually appear to be at odds with each other.  That is because the fact of each article is based on incomplete data, not uncommon in the real world.  If the newspaper in this case were peddling opinions, they likely would have altered the conclusion of one or both articles so that they would be more or less in agreement.  Then you could trust this newspaper.  Myself, I like both facts and opinions and I prefer knowing which is which.  It doesn't bother me to see facts contradict other facts if there is a reasonable explanation.  And agreement of opinion between two people may or may not mean their  position is any stronger.

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