Red Herring

Also Known as: Smoke Screen, Wild Goose Chase.

Description of Red Herring

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.

Examples of Red Herring

"Argument" for making CAP accounting standards stricter:
"I think there is great merit in making the accounting standards stricter for the CPA firms. I recommend that you support it, too. After all, we are in a budget crisis and we do not want our salaries affected."

 

Updated On: 04.06.09