Straw man fallacy

"Another well known, and much used, device is to misrepresent my position and attack things I have never said."

Rachel Carson 1

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In a straw man fallacy the opponents argument is distorted, misrepresented or simply made up. This makes the argument easier to defeat, and can also be used to make opponents look like ignorant extremists.  Examples:

"Environmentalists often think that only government action can solve a crisis"  (Sanera and Shaw, page 37).  This neglects the large amount of advice on how individuals and companies can protect the environment. and the large number of lawsuits that environmental groups have filed against government agencies.

"The Rowland and Molina theory says that CFCs are so inert that there are no sinks (nothing to capture or destroy them) in the troposphere (the portion of the atmosphere below the stratosphere).  Therefore, CFCs have very long lifetimes in the atmosphere."  (Maduro and Schauerhammer, page 6)  This is complete nonsense.  The long lifetimes are based on the production rates of CFCs and their buildup in the atmosphere.  And no scientist ever claimed that there were no tropospheric sinks.

"The ozone depletion propagandists dismiss this natural chlorine by arguing that not an ounce of it reaches the stratosphere."  (Maduro and Schauerhammer, page 23)  No scientist ever made such a claim.  F Sherwood Rowland, one of the leading "propagandists" wrote (page 21) "The very large volcanic eruption of El Chichon in 1982 increased the total amount of stratospheric chlorine by about 10%, only to fade into the CFC background in about a year."

"On the other hand, claims that all pesticides are persistent or highly toxic have been found to be wrong, as have claims that pesticides pose a serious threat to human health."  (Bast et. al, page 91, emphasis in original).  I don't know of anyone who has claimed that all pesticides are persistent or highly toxic.

One of the strangest (and most obvious) is found in Steven Milloy and Michael Gough's Silencing Science (pages 5 to 7).  The authors are in favor of human cloning research, but not because cloning humans is a good thing.  Instead we are told that such research may lead to other discoveries,  ("On a more mundane level, nonstick Teflon was only a byproduct of putting a man on the moon."  But Teflon was discovered accidentally in 1938, when going to the moon was the stuff of science fiction.) We are also told that some research should be banned for ethical reasons.  Their examples include the Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and human radiation experiments in the United States.  Then on page 7 they write that "By associating cloning with such horrific experiments, getting a ban on human cloning research will come about as fast--and easily--as a Michael Jordan slam-dunk."  But wait; it is Milloy and Gough themselves who did the associating, not the opponents of human cloning!    You don't need to be a professional magician to see through such verbal slight of hand.

References

Bast, Joseph l., Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity: A common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism, Madison Books, 1994.

Limbaugh, Rush, The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, 1992.

Maduro, Rogelio A. and Ralf Schauerhammer, The Holes in the Ozone Scare:  The Scientific Evidence That he Sky Isn't Falling, 21st Century Science Associates, 1992.

Milloy, Steven and Michael Gough, Silencing Science, Cato Institute, 1998.

Rowland, Sherwood, "The CFC controversy:  Issues and answers", ASHRAE Journal, December 1992, pp 20-27.

Sanera, Michael and Jane S. Shaw, Facts not Fear:  A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996.  Now in a second edition.

Notes:

1. From a speech to the Women's National Press Club on December 5, 1962.  Quoted on page 308 in Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson:  The Writer at Work, Sierra Club Books, 1972-1989.

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Written by Jim Norton

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