en-us 2025 A weblog for the Fallacy Files website. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ "There is no foreign institution with which, in any basic sense, [the American presidency] can be compared, because, basically, there is no comparable foreign institution. The President of the United States is both more and less than a king; he is, also, both more and less than a Prime Minister."... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive042026.html#04152026 A wretch may retch, you may feel wretched while retching, and reading "The Wretched of the Earth" may make you retch, but not all who retch are wretches.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive042026.html#04042026 A reader writes to ask: "If I ride my bicycle one mile at thirty miles per hour (MPH) to the top of a hill, how fast will I have to coast down the other side for a mile to average sixty MPH for the whole two-mile trip? A friend told me ninety MPH but I can't get the math to work. Help!" Can you solve the reader's problem? http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive042026.html#04012026 "Science is going to be critical for tackling the big challenges that our society faces. ... We need it operating at its best to tackle these problems and, while science might look like a well-oiled machine spitting out findings to those glancing at it from the outside, it looks more like a clunky old engine prone to breakdown to those of us on the inside. ... In the pages ahead I am going to show how science, rather than being immune to the passions and politics of the outside world as it is meant to be, is shaped by these influences and increasingly being threatened by them. This is to all of our detriment. Yet, just because this is the way things have been does not meant this is the way they must remain. By studying how science has gone wrong in the past (and is going increasingly wrong today) we can learn how to keep it from going wrong in the future."... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032026.html#03192026 In previous entries, we've looked at how scholarly works--or non-scholarly works trying to pass as scholarly--can have too few notes or too many. Now, it's time to turn to the ways in which individual notes can mislead.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032026.html#03082026 There are two problems with the following headline: "Marine reserves help mitigate against climate change, say scientists"... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032026.html#03052026 Every month, "Victor Timm's Mystery Magazine" conducts a survey of its readers to determine their most popular mystery writers. The list is ordered from one to five from favorite (1) to least liked (5). The same five writers, including Brand, made the list this month as last month, but each was in a different position. For instance, Christie rose in this month's rankings from last month. If you add together the digits of the positions from last month and this month, then the sum for Armstrong is seven, Christie's is eight, Doyle's is six, and Edwards' is five. From the information above, can you determine the positions of the top five mystery writers for both months? http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032026.html#03032026 "The conspiracists work hard to give their written evidence the veneer of scholarship. The approach has been described as death by footnote."... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive022026.html#02092026 "When I was only three, and still named Belle Miriam Silverman, I sang my first aria in pubic." Thus read the first sentence of the first printing of the first edition of an autobiographical work by the late opera singer, Beverly Sills.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive022026.html#02042026 A spy has infiltrated the Agency for Counter-Terrorism. According to the agency's definition, a spy is someone who knows everyone in the agency by name but is known by name to no one else. An internal investigation by the agency's spyhunters has narrowed the suspects down to eight agents whom I will call only A through H to protect the seven innocent suspects.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive022026.html#02012026 There seems to be a theme to this month's entries, namely, numeracy or the lack thereof; this was not intentional but simply the result of what I've happened to notice recently. I suppose it's because I've started reading John Allen Paulos' latest book, "Who's Counting?", a collection of his columns of the same title for ABC News from 2000-2010, along with updates and some more recent writings.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01282026 I recently purchased a "take and bake" pizza, that is, one that is made in the store and then sold to a customer to take home and bake. As is usual, the packaging on the pizza included a standardized nutrition information label, according to which a serving size was "about" one-ninth of the total pizza--I mean the label is usual; the serving size was unusual.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01202026 A recent article in "The New York Times" on increased interest in the use of beef tallow in cooking now includes the following correction.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01152026 Montgomery "Three-Card Monty" Banks was sitting on his usual stool at the bar of his favorite local spot when a stranger sat down beside him. "Howdy," Monty began, "May I offer you a sporting proposition." The bartender, who knew Monty well, rolled his eyes but the stranger didn't notice. He just looked at Monty with raised eyebrows.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01052026 The previous three entries in this series were introductory ones designed to explain the purpose of scholarly notes and how to read them. Having covered that, we're now ready to get into the primary purpose of the series, namely, to explain how notes can be misleading.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01032026 Consider my shock when I recently read the following sentence in a book: "Consider that it is far more likely for someone to be struck twice by lightening if they live on a property that attracts electricity." "Lightening" is the present participle of "to lighten", meaning to make lighter either in the sense of less dark or less heavy. So, "lightening" refers to the process of something becoming lighter.... http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive012026.html#01012026