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Only on rare occasions do debaters present evidence that is clearly irrelevant to their claims. As a result, clear-cut examples of this fallacy are uncommon. However, an example of such a fallacy occurred when an applicant for an engineering position in a job interview was asked to explain his job qualifications. The applicant replied that his parents were elderly, he had two children, he was recently divorced, and had lost his job. Clearly, the evidence that the applicant provided is an example of the fallacy of irrelevant reason. The evidence might have been relevant to a different claim such as “Why do you need this job?” but not to the question of “Why are you qualified for this job?”
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Johnson and Blair present an example of that fallacy in their text:
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A Member of Parliament in Canada once charged, in the House of Commons, that the Federal Department of Health and Welfare had been cooperating with the Kellogg Company in permitting the sale of a cereal (Kellogg’s Corn Flakes) that had “little or no nutritional value.” Marc Lalonde, then the Minister of Health seeking to rebut that charge stated: “As for the nutritional value of Corn Flakes, the milk you have with your Corn Flakes has great nutritional value”.
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Lalonde’s claim (implicit rather than explicit) is that corn flakes have nutritional value. His evidence that milk has great nutritional value is clearly not relevant to the nutritional value of corn flakes. Thus, he has presented a fallacious argument because his evidence provides no support for his claim.
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Even though clear-cut cases of irrelevant reason may be relatively rare, several variants on that fallacy are more common. The three examples of fallacies that follow show instances where an argument is directed toward some issue other than the claim the debater is making. As a result, those fallacies can be classified as irrelevant reasons.
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21.2.2.1 Argument Ad Hominem Argument ad hominem means that an argument involves an irrelevant attack on the arguer’s character or background that is not relevant to the argument being made.
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Of course, not all ad hominem arguments are fallacious—only those where the attack is not relevant to the arguer’s claim. Whether an attack is relevant or not is often a matter of debate. For instance, an arguer might claim that pollution in China is getting worse. Then, someone might respond: “But of course you would think that. You are from Beijing.” Is this response an irrelevant ad hominem argument, or not? The answer is that it depends first on whether being “from Beijing” is considered a personal attack, and second, on whether the fact that a person is from Beijing is relevant to the original claim. If the statement, “You are from Beijing,” is considered a personal attack, the argument is ad hominem. But if being from Beijing is relevant to whether or not a person believes that “Pollution is getting worse,” even though the argument is ad hominem, it is not irrelevant and, thus, is not an irrelevant ad hominem fallacy.
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Some ad hominem attacks are not fallacies. Suppose, hypothetically, that someone presents highly credible evidence accusing a candidate for Minister of Health and Welfare of cheating on her medical exams. Such an attack is unquestionably an attack on the candidate, but is clearly relevant to her potential role as head of the ministry. Thus, the argument is not a fallacious ad hominem argument.
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21.2.2.2 An Argument of Straw An argument of straw is another kind of fallacy that fails to meet the criterion of relevance. It fails to meet that criterion by intentionally misinterpreting an opponent’s argument. The fallacy occurs when a debater construes the argument of another to be other than what it is, then, attacks the misconstrued argument rather than the actual argument. Following the metaphor of “argument of straw,” the debater reconstructs the original argument into a weaker argument of straw, then attacks that argument rather than the original one.
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For instance, someone might oppose the death penalty because of the risk of executing an innocent person, particularly because, once a person’s life is taken, it can never be given back. A critic using a straw-person fallacy might respond: “Your stand not to penalize murderers because an innocent person might be punished is irrational. We might as well open the doors of all prisons and let everyone go to avoid convicting an innocent person.” That response uses a straw-person argument because the argument that the debater is attacking is not the original argument made by the other debater. The original debater did not suggest that the risk of convicting an innocent person means we should never convict anyone, but rather that we should not use a punishment that takes a life because life can never be restored.
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21.2.2.3 A Red Herring Fallacy A red herring fallacy is another argument that shifts the focus away from the current discussion in order to sidestep or even end that discussion. An argument that is similar to but different from the one involved in the current discussion is introduced in the hopes that the topic of the discussion will be changed in ways that are irrelevant to the original.
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The red herring fallacy was originally named for a practice used in English foxhunts. At the end of the hunt, the hunters would place a herring on the path of the fox so that the hounds would lose track of the fox. A red herring argument is similarly designed to cause debaters to lose track of the important issues.
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In the 2004 US presidential election, two of the main issues were the US economy and the war in Iraq. Not wanting to discuss those main issues, one party introduced policies in the US congress to ban gay marriage. In this case, the media and much of the electorate began to focus on gay marriage and discontinued the discussion of the original issues of economy and war.
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The three above issues are examples of arguments that are fallacious because they fail the criterion of relevance. Of course, many other ways to avoid that criterion are possible. A few of them are briefly defined below.
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21.2.2.4 Poisoning the Well Poisoning the well is a fallacious argument that attempts to discredit a person or a source in advance of their argument. “Dr. Summers is a Republican. We can only expect her to be against affirmative action.”
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21.2.2.5 Guilt by Association Guilt by association is a fallacious attempt to attack a person’s argument not on the issues pertinent to the argument, but on the basis of groups and people with whom the person is associated. “How can we possibly support Ms. Cooper’s views on the economy? After all, she married a capitalist.”
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21.2.2.6 An Appeal to Fear It involves an attempt to invoke fear to take the focus off the argument. An appeal to fear is only fallacious when fear is used solely to shift the focus from the issue. For example, “If we elect my opponent, we should all build bomb shelters for our families immediately and prepare to be attacked because my opponent has very little foreign policy experience.”
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21.2.2.7 An Appeal to Popularity It uses the popularity of a person, product, or belief to justify a favorable conclusion about that person, product or belief. For example, “Most Serbs support President Boris Tadic. So should you.”
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21.2.2.8 An Appeal to Tradition It attempts to argue in favor of a particular action on the grounds of tradition rather than on the basis of the merits of that action. For example, “The US Constitution has allowed citizens to possess guns for the past 200 years, so we should continue to do so for the next 200 years.”