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Logical Fallacies

Instructions:

Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
Match each statement with the correct term.
Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.

1. If we let homosexual couple live on our street before you know it our neighborhood will start to become like Greenwich Village in New York or the Castro District in San Francisco.
Slippery Slope Example
Either/Or. Example
Begging the Question Example
Scare Tatics Example

2. This sort of argument relies on the faulty assumption that because one event follows another - the second necessarily causes the first
Faulty Causality
Begging the Question Example
Scare Tatics Example
Faulty Causality Example

3. This is a conclusion based on insufficient evidence. In other words - you are rushing to a conclusion before you have all the relevant facts.
Slipper Slop Example
Begging the Question Example
Hasty Generalization
Bandwagon Appeal Example

4. Everyone else is displaying a flag - or a support our troops sticker on their car - therefore - you should too.
Sentimental Appeals
Scare Tatics
Red Herring Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example

5. American students' relatively poor performance in foreign language and geography examinations means that they should be subjected to regular standardized tests in these two areas each year throughout their mandatory period of schooling.
Ad hominem Example
Non sequitur Example
Straw Man
Hasty Generalization

6. I don't support the President's foreign policy; look at the disastrous way he has taken care of our domestic economy.
Begging the Question Example
Red herring Example
Sentimental Appeals Example
Straw Man Example

7. This argument gives a lie an honest appearance - by insisting on What is only partially or formally true.
Equivocation
Straw Man
Slippery Slope Example
Appeals to False Authority Example

8. It has been scientifically proven that people need to drink a certain amount of water every day to keep healthy. Water is liquid and so is beer. Therefore people should be able to substitute beer for water - drinking beer each day as doctors recommen
Appeals to False Authority
Scare Tatics
Faulty Analogy Example
Hasty Generalization Example

9. This argumentative fallacy in which the rhetor frames an issue in terms of exaggerated threats or dangers.
Appeals to False Authority
Slippery Slope
Ad hominem Example
Scare Tatics

10. There's no way a man could love a man or a woman love a woman as much as a man and woman love each other.
Non sequitur
Dogmatism
Faulty Causality Example
Dogmatism Example

11. You can't give me a C - I'm an A student.
Begging the Question EX.
Sentimental Appeals Example
Equivocation Example
Faulty Causality Example

12. I can't be guilty of embezzlement; I'm an honest person.
Begging the Question
Begging the Question Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Appeals to False Authority

13. This logical fallacy proposes that there are simply cannot be another possible way of making sense of and engaging with an issue but the one you represent.
Dogmatism Example
Dogmatism
Faulty Causality Example
Either/Or. Example

14. My friend - who is serving in infantry in Iraq - tells me that the government has a secret plan for how to win the war that they won't release until after the election - and because he is my friend and I like and respect him - this must be true.
Scare Tatics Example
Dogmatism
Begging the Question EX.
Appeals to False Authority Example

15. In listening to what you have to say I have this to say in reply: only an idiot would argue for pursuing a peaceful solution to this conflict.
Straw Man
Ad hominem Example
Faulty Causality Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example

16. Person: A we should liberalize the laws one beer B: No any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification.
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Straw Man
Straw Man Example
Either/Or. Example

17. Green Peace's strategies aren't effective because they are all dirty - lazy hippies.
Either/Or. Example
Equivocation Example
Bandwagon appeal
Ad hominem Example

18. Filthy and polluting coal should be banned.
Equivocation Example
Begging the Question
Equivocation Example
Begging the Question Example

19. In this case the writer forms an argument which leaves out a necessary portion in a logical sequence - seeming to suggest a logical connection when in fact one does not exist.
Ad hominem
Non sequitur
Red herring Example
Dogmatism Example

20. I knew a gay guy who was not very masculine; this just goes to show that gay guys are more effeminate than straight men.
Faulty Analogy Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Non sequitur
Scare Tatics

21. If you restrict my right to say whatever I want however I want this is the beginning of totalitarianism in America.
Straw Man
Sentimental Appeals
Faulty Causality Example
Slippery Slope Example

22. Students in kindergarten at Jefferson Elementary school did better when given milk and cookies than when not; therefore students at UWEC will do better too if they are given milk and cookies in class.
Either/Or.
Faulty Analogy Example
Red herring Example
Appeals to False Authority Example

23. This move oversimplifies an opponents' view point and then attacks that hollow argument. This opponents position is misrepresented as being more extreme than it actually is - so it becomes easier to refute.
Straw Man
Appeals to False Authority Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Appeals to False Authority Example

24. Britney Spears says that George W. Bush has got a great plan for the economy - and so therefore I am supporting him because I trust what she has to say.
Faulty Analogy Example
Ad hominem Example
Appeals to False Authority Example
Either/Or.

25. Because of the possibility of a terrorist hijacking or mechanical failure - flying on a plane is too dangerous and should be avoided altogether.
Begging the Question Example
Scare Tatics Example
Either/Or. Example
Appeals to False Authority

26. This involves drawing an analogy that is based upon faulty equations or identifications of terms. The writer makes a comparisons between two objects which is either inaccurate or inconsequential.
Straw Man
Equivocation Example
Faulty Analogy
Ad hominem Example

27. This is a conclusion that oversimplifies the argument by reducing it only to two sides or choices.
Either/Or.
Slippery Slope Example
Straw Man
Faulty Causality Example

28. A black family move into my neighborhood once - and they were financially quite well-off - better than we were; this proves that black people actually are economically equal to whites.
Hasty Generalization Example
Either/Or. Example
Begging the Question EX.
Equivocation Example

29. Even though it's only the first day - I can tell this is going to be a boring course.
Scare Tatics Example
Non sequitur
Hasty Generalization Example
Faulty Causality Example

30. Because of the possibility of poisoning of Halloween candy by some people who give it out to trick or treaters - communities should ban trick-or-treating.
Faulty Causality Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Scare Tatics Example

31. This is a diversionary tactic that avoid key issues - often by avoiding opposing arguments rather than addressing them.
Red Herring
Either/Or.
Faulty Analogy Example
Scare Tatics Example

32. That boy scout made an old lady's day by visiting and entertaining her in her nursing home; we should give generously to the boy scouts as a result.
Appeals to False Authority Example
Faulty Causality
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Sentimental Appeals. Ex

33. She is feminist; she must hate men.
Non sequitur Example
Straw Man
Appeals to False Authority Example
Faulty Causality Example

34. You can't trust jim to do a good job as student body president; he doesn't dress with an up-to-date sense of style.
Ad hominem
Red Herring Example
Slippery Slope
Bandwagon Appeal Example

35. The conclusion that the writer should prove is validated within the claim. The author assumes as true they very claim that is disputed - in a circular argument.
Begging the Question
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Bandwagon appeal
Faulty Analogy Example

36. This is an attack on the character of a person rather than her/his opinions or arguments.
Ad hominem
Either/Or. Example
Begging the Question Example
Faulty Causality

37. The administration closed the smoking court in our school at the end of the last year - and fights among students have gone down his year; therefore - closing the smoking court caused the reaction in fights among students.
Scare Tatics Example
Slippery Slope
Sentimental Appeals Example
Faulty Causality Example

38. I did not have sex with that woman(if by sex you mean penile-vaginal intercourse). (from bill clinton in relation of the nature of his relationship with monica lewinsky)
Either/Or.
Equivocation Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Sentimental Appeals. Ex

39. The writer suggest that readers should listen and follow what someone has to say about something that he or she is in fact not a credible - reliable authority on.
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Appeals to False Authority
Red herring Example
Faulty Analogy

40. Either you support the president in everything he says and does or you are not a patriotic American
Non sequitur Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Either/Or. Example
Begging the Question EX.

41. Relying on manipulatively heart-warming or heart-wrenching appeals to emotion to win support for what has not been otherwise rationally justified.
Red Herring Example
Appeals to False Authority Example
Either/Or. Example
Sentimental Appeals

42. That celebrity is suffering a lot of pain and aguish after breaking p with his girlfriend and coming through drug and alcohol rehabilitation treatment; he is a role model for all of us - and needs us to support him by his albums and going to his movi
Ad hominem Example
Sentimental Appeals Example
Faulty Analogy Example
Begging the Question

43. There's no way that anyone can argue that abortion is anything other than murder.
Dogmatism Example
Red Herring Example
Red herring Example
Dogmatism

44. Either you worship God or you worship Satan.
Equivocation
Faulty Causality
Either/Or. Example
Scare Tatics Example

45. We can either stop using cars or destroy the earth.
Scare Tatics Example
Begging the Question Example
Equivocation Example
Either/Or. Example

46. This fallacy of argument recommends a course of action on the grounds that everyone else is following the same path.
Bandwagon appeal
Hasty Generalization Example
Slippery Slope Example
Ad hominem Example

47. Here's what I think about what you have written: anyone who opposes the death penalty for murder is a criminal at heart.
Scare Tatics Example
Red Herring
Slippery Slope Example
Ad hominem Example

48. I gave you everything i had to give to you(right then and there when you asked me - but of course everything I could have given you if I took into account what I maintain elsewhere.)
Ad hominem Example
Bandwagon appeal
Appeals to False Authority Example
Equivocation Example

49. I drank bottled water and now I am sick - so the water must have made me sick.
Faulty Causality Example
Scare Tatics Example
Ad hominem
Ad hominem Example

50. The level of mercury in seafood may be unsafe - but what will fishers do to support their families?
Either/Or. Example
Appeals to False Authority
Faulty Analogy Example
Red herring Example