Also known as cherry picking, card stacking, stacking the deck, ignoring the counter-evidence, slanting, suppressed evidence, fallacy of incomplete evidence, argument by selective observation, argument by half-truth, fallacy of exclusion, ignoring the counter evidence, one-sided assessment, one-sidedness.
Description
When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept a position, and evidence that would go against the position is withheld. The stronger the withheld evidence, the more fallacious the argument.
The one-sidedness fallacy doesn't mean the premises are false or irrelevant, only that they are incomplete. The argument may appeal to relevant considerations, but not to all relevant considerations.
The lesson is to cultivate two-sidedness in your thinking about any issue.
Logical Form:
- Evidence A and evidence B is available.
- Evidence A supports the claim of person 1.
- Evidence B supports the counter claim of person 2.
- Therefore, person 1 presents only evidence A.
Example #1:
Religious Apologist: “Atheism is a bad thing. Just look at how many people have been killed by atheist dictators!”
Explanation:
The Religious Apologist has created a one sided argument by leaving out a lot of information. In particular he has omitted any information regarding the millions of people killed throughout human history as a result of the actions of dictators who were not atheists.
A balanced, two-sided argument would require a list of unelected leaders from the beginning of recorded history, an indication of whether they were theists, deists or atheists, and the volume of killing they were responsible for as a percentage of the population at the time.
From the excellent Bo Bennet website
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/66-cherry-picking
Also read more here... http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/inflogic/onesided.htm
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