A lobbyist asserts: 'Why should we worry about river pollution from our chemical plant when thousands of people are dying in foreign civil wars?' Which fallacy is evident?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. red herring
- Step 1: The lobbyist introduces an emotionally charged, completely unrelated international tragedy to divert attention from local industrial pollution. Introducing an irrelevant issue to distract from the topic under consideration is a red herring fallacy. Answer: red herring. Why not the others: "post hoc causal misattribution" confuses temporal chronological succession with a direct causal relationship; "slippery slope argument" claims an initial step will inevitably trigger a disastrous series of events; "equivocation of meaning" shifts the meaning of a key term between premises within a single logical syllogism.
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