The most reasonable thing to do depends on the specific situation you are in. It is not always possible to return to the original topic or even continue having a productive discussion.
Insist on continuing with the original topic. 
You can accept the new topic of discussion and continue with it. There may be various factors affecting your opponent’s behavior, and they may still be unwilling to return to the original issue. Then, direct the focus of the discussion back to the original issue by rephrasing your argument or question. When you do identify one, make it clear to the other party that the new issue is irrelevant to the topic of the discussion and, if needed, explain why they are committing a fallacy. In order to spot the fallacy, you need to remember that, essentially, an argument containing a red herring uses irrelevant information to change the topic of the discussion. When it comes to countering red herring arguments, it is essential to understand how the fallacy works and listen carefully before answering. However, the ignoratio elenchi is a deliberate attempt to divert the focus while avoiding the question occurs when someone misses the point unintentionally. 
Avoiding the question: Similarly to the topic of this article, avoiding the question is a logical fallacy of presenting an argument or a response that doesn’t address the actual issue in question. The difference is that, unlike the straw man, red herring is an attempt to shift the focus to a different issue. Straw man fallacy: This flaw in reasoning is a distortion or a misrepresentation of an argument in order to make it easier to defeat, while still pretending to focus on the original issue. There are two particularly similar fallacies that may be confused with this one: the straw man fallacy and avoiding the question. Red herring is an informal fallacy and, more specifically, belongs to the relevance fallacies, which are a broad sub-category of informal fallacies. In this example, John uses a red herring in an attempt to distract Joanna from the real issue, which is the fact that he exceeded the budget that they had both agreed upon. Joanna: “Why did you buy that new fishing rod? It exceeds our monthly budget that we both agreed upon.” John: “Well, because it was on sale. Whether someone else would charge that rate or not is irrelevant to the real issue of it being unethical. It’s unethical.” Jonathan: “Well, if I didn’t charge them that rate, someone else would.” Kim: “You shouldn’t charge your clients 25% interest on their loans. 
We pay our taxes.” “Surely global meltdown is infinitely worse than a little inconvenience?” Example in Business “The police should stop environmental demonstrators from inconveniencing the general public.
#Red herring fallacy def how to
The following example involving politics was given by Madsen Pirie in his book How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic: The politician in the example uses a red herring in order to avoid answering the real question.
Politician: “I have been working hard ever since I came into office, and I’m happy to say that I met with many business leaders throughout the country, who all say that they are glad to see that our hard work is paying off.”. Reporter: “It’s been two years since your policies were implemented, and so far they have failed to reduce unemployment rates.”. Now, let’s look at some examples of red herrings in politics, media, and real life to better understand it. This could be a valuable device of problem posing that forces the solvers to investigate the problem first, separate what's important from what is not, and focus on the former.Furthermore, this fallacy is also known as “ignoratio elenchi”, “irrelevant conclusion”, “beside the point”, “false emphasis” and the “Chewbacca defense”. A red herring is a superficial and redundant piece of information that often complicates the formulation and obscurs the nature, of the problem. Haddon, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, Vintage Books, 2003)Ī red herring is an artificial distraction from the essence of the problem. is a clue which makes you come to a wrong conclusion or something which looks like a clue but isn't.
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