Quiz 5: Each of the following passages commits at least one fallacy. Identify and briefly explain one fallacy for each of the passages.
- If you want a life full of sexual pleasure, don’t graduate from college. A study to be published next month in American Demographics magazine shows that people with the most education have the least amount of sex.
- If science wishes to argue that we cannot know what was going on in [the gorilla] Binti’s head when she acted as she did, science must also acknowledge that it cannot prove that nothing was going on. It is because of our irresolvable ignorance, as much as fellow-feeling, that we should give animals the benefit of the doubt and treat them with the respect we accord ourselves.
- What is more useful, the Sun or the Moon? The moon is more useful since it gives us light during the night, when it is dark, whereas the Sun shines only in the daytime, when it is light anyway.
- You know why you think that? Because you are an idiot!
- Why should you clean your room? If you don’t you will be grounded.
Quiz 6: Each of the following passages contains at least one slanter. Identify and briefly explain one slanter for each of the passages.
- During the half-time performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII Janet Jackson experienced a “wardrobe malfunction” exposing her breast.
- Comedian Bill Maher once described a conservative as someone who thinks all problems can be solved by either more guns or more Jesus.
- Ladies and gentleman, I am proof that there is at least one candidate in this race who does not have a drinking problem.
- Great Western pays up to 12 percent more interest in checking accounts.
- John “borrowed” Hank’s umbrella, and Hank hasn’t seen it since.
- After George W. Bush announced he wanted to privatize large sectors of the government, Bobby L. Harnage said Bush had “declared all-out war on federal employees.”
- Making a former corporate CEO the head of the SEC is like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse.
- Remember, it’s not drilling for oil. It’s responsible energy exploration.
- George Bush ‘won’ the election in 2000, didn’t he?
- National Health Care: The compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the Post Office, all at Pentagon prices.
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