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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 can Hummers because they are bad for the environment eventually the government will ban all cars - so we should not ban hummers.
Slipper Slop Example
Appeals to False Authority
Equivocation
Appeals to False Authority Example

2. I knew a gay guy who was not very masculine; this just goes to show that gay guys are more effeminate than straight men.
Scare Tatics Example
Red herring Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Faulty Causality Example

3. 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 Example
Ad hominem
Dogmatism Example
Red Herring Example

4. Here's what I think about what you have written: anyone who opposes the death penalty for murder is a criminal at heart.
Ad hominem Example
Slippery Slope
Red herring Example
Either/Or.

5. Because of the possibility of a terrorist hijacking or mechanical failure - flying on a plane is too dangerous and should be avoided altogether.
Straw Man
Hasty Generalization
Appeals to False Authority Example
Scare Tatics Example

6. 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.
Ad hominem Example
Dogmatism Example
Faulty Analogy
Begging the Question Example

7. 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
Sentimental Appeals Example
Slippery Slope
Slipper Slop Example
Hasty Generalization

8. Green Peace's strategies aren't effective because they are all dirty - lazy hippies.
Dogmatism
Begging the Question EX.
Ad hominem
Ad hominem Example

9. 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
Equivocation Example
Faulty Analogy Example
Appeals to False Authority Example
Sentimental Appeals

10. 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.
Begging the Question EX.
Non sequitur
Straw Man Example
Non sequitur Example

11. 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
Slippery Slope
Appeals to False Authority
Scare Tatics Example

12. This is a diversionary tactic that avoid key issues - often by avoiding opposing arguments rather than addressing them.
Sentimental Appeals. Ex
Hasty Generalization Example
Bandwagon appeal
Red Herring

13. Filthy and polluting coal should be banned.
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Equivocation Example
Begging the Question Example
Faulty Analogy

14. This is a conclusion based on insufficient evidence. In other words - you are rushing to a conclusion before you have all the relevant facts.
Begging the Question Example
Either/Or. Example
Straw Man Example
Hasty Generalization

15. This argumentative fallacy in which the rhetor frames an issue in terms of exaggerated threats or dangers.
Red Herring
Appeals to False Authority Example
Scare Tatics
Begging the Question Example

16. 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.
Either/Or. Example
Slipper Slop Example
Straw Man
Ad hominem Example

17. 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.
Sentimental Appeals
Slipper Slop Example
Ad hominem
Sentimental Appeals. Ex

18. 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.
Red herring Example
Appeals to False Authority Example
Either/Or. Example
Hasty Generalization

19. 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.
Slipper Slop Example
Red herring Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Sentimental Appeals Example

20. 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.
Faulty Analogy
Slippery Slope Example
Scare Tatics Example
Ad hominem Example

21. 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.
Slippery Slope Example
Slippery Slope
Begging the Question
Slippery Slope Example

22. I don't support the President's foreign policy; look at the disastrous way he has taken care of our domestic economy.
Faulty Causality
Red herring Example
Dogmatism Example
Slippery Slope Example

23. This is a conclusion based on the premise that if A happens - then eventually through a series of small steps - through B -C -...X -Y -Z will happen - too basically equating A and Z.
Slipper Slop Example
Begging the Question Example
Slippery Slope
Slippery Slope Example

24. 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.
Equivocation
Dogmatism Example
Red Herring
Sentimental Appeals. Ex

25. 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)
Equivocation Example
Slipper Slop Example
Ad hominem Example
Red herring Example

26. Either you support the president in everything he says and does or you are not a patriotic American
Either/Or. Example
Dogmatism
Faulty Analogy Example
Begging the Question

27. This argument gives a lie an honest appearance - by insisting on What is only partially or formally true.
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Faulty Analogy
Appeals to False Authority Example
Equivocation

28. This is an attack on the character of a person rather than her/his opinions or arguments.
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Ad hominem
Straw Man Example
Ad hominem Example

29. Everyone else is displaying a flag - or a support our troops sticker on their car - therefore - you should too.
Slippery Slope Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Faulty Analogy
Bandwagon Appeal Example

30. We can either stop using cars or destroy the earth.
Either/Or. Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Ad hominem Example
Slippery Slope Example

31. Relying on manipulatively heart-warming or heart-wrenching appeals to emotion to win support for what has not been otherwise rationally justified.
Equivocation Example
Sentimental Appeals
Slippery Slope Example
Hasty Generalization Example

32. There's no way that anyone can argue that abortion is anything other than murder.
Dogmatism Example
Ad hominem Example
Appeals to False Authority Example
Red herring Example

33. Even though it's only the first day - I can tell this is going to be a boring course.
Ad hominem Example
Hasty Generalization Example
Slipper Slop Example
Scare Tatics

34. She is feminist; she must hate men.
Hasty Generalization
Equivocation
Red Herring
Non sequitur Example

35. This fallacy of argument recommends a course of action on the grounds that everyone else is following the same path.
Bandwagon appeal
Ad hominem Example
Equivocation Example
Faulty Causality Example

36. 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.
Dogmatism Example
Scare Tatics
Scare Tatics Example
Faulty Analogy

37. 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.
Appeals to False Authority Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example
Begging the Question Example
Hasty Generalization Example

38. You can't give me a C - I'm an A student.
Begging the Question EX.
Bandwagon appeal
Scare Tatics Example
Slippery Slope Example

39. This is a conclusion that oversimplifies the argument by reducing it only to two sides or choices.
Red Herring Example
Begging the Question EX.
Faulty Causality
Either/Or.

40. Everyone else is going out and getting drunk tonight - so you should too.
Slipper Slop Example
Faulty Analogy Example
Red Herring Example
Bandwagon Appeal Example

41. If you restrict my right to say whatever I want however I want this is the beginning of totalitarianism in America.
Slippery Slope Example
Bandwagon appeal
Non sequitur Example
Begging the Question EX.

42. 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.)
Faulty Causality Example
Red Herring
Equivocation Example
Non sequitur Example

43. This sort of argument relies on the faulty assumption that because one event follows another - the second necessarily causes the first
Bandwagon appeal
Red herring Example
Scare Tatics Example
Faulty Causality

44. 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
Equivocation Example
Scare Tatics Example
Red Herring

45. Either you worship God or you worship Satan.
Dogmatism Example
Faulty Analogy Example
Either/Or. Example
Slippery Slope Example

46. The level of mercury in seafood may be unsafe - but what will fishers do to support their families?
Slippery Slope Example
Red herring Example
Equivocation Example
Ad hominem Example

47. 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.
Sentimental Appeals. Ex
Faulty Analogy Example
Either/Or. Example
Begging the Question EX.

48. 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.
Red Herring
Sentimental Appeals Example
Slippery Slope
Faulty Causality Example

49. 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.
Dogmatism Example
Bandwagon appeal
Non sequitur Example
Red herring Example

50. 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.
Appeals to False Authority Example
Straw Man Example
Ad hominem
Red herring Example