In other words, the authority figure being referred is not a real expert, or their expertise is not really relevant to the field of study the argument is concerned with. Appeal to false authority occurs when the words of poor or irrelevant authorities are used as evidence for a certain claim.Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which someone criticizes the source of the argument in an attempt to refute their claim, instead of addressing the argument itself.In most situations where the genetic fallacy is committed, it is an instance of one of its more specific sub-fallacies. There are a number of different types of genetic fallacies, the most common ones being the appeal to false authority and ad hominem. “You shouldn’t believe anything the media says, it’s all fake news.”.“We can safely dismiss any opinion from person X on economic inequality since he is a millionaire himself.”.When someone asked the two candidates what policies they would implement to limit the availability of assault weapons, neither candidate truly answered the question. Presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. One classic example of a political red herring occurred in a 2012 U.S. “You think we should get more women into science? You only say that because you are a woman yourself, so it must be false.” Examples of Red Herring Fallacy in Politics.“You shouldn’t buy a Volkswagen, it must be a terrible car since it was created by the Nazis.”.“Richard Dawkins, a brilliant evolutionary biologist, said that God doesn’t exist.“I can’t believe anything my doctor says about my health issues, he is overweight himself!”.The genetic fallacy is also known as the fallacy of origins and the fallacy of virtue.
As such, this line of reasoning becomes fallacious when the source or history of the claim is irrelevant to its truth value. Any claim should be evaluated by looking at its own merits (or demerits) unless the history of the claim is somehow related to its present-day value. Generally, we should separate argument sources from the content of the argument even if the source is deemed to be bad or good, it doesn’t mean that the argument itself is necessarily bad or good.
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