Thread by @ScienceIsDope_

A thread of logical fallacies I've gotten in the replies so far:

https://twitter.com/anilkrjain/status/1430764910703648770?s=20

This person is committing an appeal to ignorance fallacy. You'll often hear people defend their arguments with "science has limitations", "science doesn't know yet", "keep an open mind". No reason to believe in anything that doesn't have good evidence

https://twitter.com/SunylK/status/1430737705940312068?s=20

Same fallacy again here. Another version of this fallacy is when people say "You don't know X is not true", "X has not been proven false"

The ignorance of something's falsehood does not make it true.

https://twitter.com/ravi2tweet/status/1430759230043136001?s=20

This is an appeal to authority fallacy. When you rely on someone's authority ( experience or qualification ) rather than examine the claim he's making

https://twitter.com/bnmallick/status/1430736163912908800?s=20

False dichotomy fallacy. This person assumes the existence of 2 types of science - western and eastern - such a dichotomy does not exist. There's only one science.

I had one more tweet I wanted to show you, where the person was insulting, saying words like "sh**head". But the author seems to have deleted the tweet.

Anytime a person replies with an insult or a personal attack instead of addressing your point or answering your question...

...that's an ad hominem fallacy. The name comes from latin meaning "to the person"

Adding more to this thread:

Red herring fallacy: when you introduce something irrelevant into the discussion to distract from the point or question you don't have an answer to.

The discussion was on Ayurveda and traditional medicine. He changed the topic

https://twitter.com/malfurionrage/status/1430896979341496326?s=19

1/n. (Sorry the numbering is starting later in the thread 😅)

This is an appeal to authority fallacy: This person is making his conclusions based on what one person has to say.

I've seen this Allen Savory video/quote as a response many times.

https://twitter.com/johnketty1111/status/1430937752493641732?s=20

2/n. Allen Savory was an ecologist often criticized for making conclusions against empirical evidence. Some papers he published have been rejected by peer review. Savory then began criticizing the idea of peer review.

3/n. Contrary to what he says, scientists are not so dumb that they reject any idea unless it is in a peer reviewed paper. Every scientist, and scientists/doctors here can back me up on this, is open to any new idea if it is backed well by evidence.

4/n. What Hegde has done in my original post is called a strawman fallacy.

Called so because of what the strawman is. A man shaped doll made out of straw that you can burn instead of your real target. Eg. In protest marches and stuff

https://twitter.com/ScienceIsDope_/status/1430593276197826561?s=19

5/n. The same way, a strawman fallacy involves changing or altering the details of the original argument or point in a way that can easily be attacked.

It's a fallacy because you've not responded to the argument, you've gone against the strawman instead.

6/n. This is the "no true scotsman" or "appeal to purity" fallacy.

He's basically saying that there's something science doesn't know. Therefore all of science must be bad (and must be rejected)

In other words, science isn't pure enough.

https://twitter.com/arunkhazanchi/status/1431477621716516865?s=20