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February 3rd, 2010 (Permalink)

Headline

Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts

Thankfully, there are no alligators in this part of the country. The above headline was taken from The New York Times Magazine's most recent "On Language" column. According to the column, such amphibolous headlines have been dubbed "crash blossoms". The name is taken from another example: "Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms". I don't much care for the name "crash blossoms", and I doubt it will catch on, but you never know. Of course, as any reader of The Fallacy Files knows, I do like crash blossoms and use them here under the rubric "Headlines". If you like them too, then read the whole thing.

Source: Ben Zimmer, "On Language: Crash Blossoms", The New York Times Magazine, 1/27/2010

February 1st, 2010 (Permalink)

Untie the Nots, Part 3

You sign up for an internet service but after less than a month decide that you don't want to continue it. However, the agreement you signed contains the following puzzling statement:

You will not be charged your first monthly fee unless you don't cancel within the first 30 days.

Can you cancel the service without paying the first monthly fee? To find the answer, determine which of the following statements has the same meaning as the puzzling statement:

  1. If you cancel within the first thirty days, you will be charged your first monthly fee.
  2. You will be charged your first monthly fee unless you cancel within the first 30 days.
  3. You will be charged your first monthly fee only if you cancel within the first thirty days.
  4. If you cancel within the first thirty days, you will not be charged your first monthly fee.
  5. If you don't cancel within the first thirty days, you will be charged your first monthly fee.

Solution

Previous Puzzles:

January 30th, 2010 (Permalink)

Headline, Too

"Avatar" Becomes Highest-Grossing Movie

Here's the "Numbers Guy" on "Avatar"'s record-breaking box office:

Barely a month into its theatrical run, "Avatar" set a record for world-wide ticket sales, topping $1.85 billion. That is a reflection of its wide popularity, and also a reminder of the quirky way that Hollywood crowns champions. In recent decades, the agreed-upon benchmark for movie dominance has been box-office revenue, unadjusted for inflation. That means "Avatar," like the previous all-time leader, 1997's "Titanic," and prior box-office kings benefited in part from favorable comparisons. Since tallies of ticket sales aren't adjusted for inflation, rising ticket prices have helped pave the way for a number of more-recent films, including "The Dark Knight" and "Transformers," to land near the top of box-office rankings. Of the top 25 grossing films of all time on Hollywood.com's U.S. box-office ranking, 18 were released in the past decade. Adjust the totals for higher admission prices mainly due to inflation, and "Avatar" would be the only one of those 18 to make the list―at No. 24, as of Thursday.

If inflation didn't exist, Hollywood would invent it.

Sources:

Salvador Dali
January 28th, 2010 (Permalink)

Headline

Bacon and eggs could help pregnant women boost their baby's intelligence

According to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper:

The traditional English breakfast is not normally associated with good health. But scientists have found that eating a plate of bacon and eggs could help pregnant women boost the intelligence of their unborn child. Women are usually given a list of foods to avoid during pregnancy and it is well documented that a pregnant woman's diet can affect her unborn baby. But the new study suggests that a chemical in pork products and eggs can help the baby's growing brain to develop. Scientists at the University of North Carolina have discovered that the micronutrient, called choline, is vital in helping babies in the womb develop parts of their brains linked to memory and recall.

Before you run out to Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast, read the rest of the article:

Dr Gerald Weissmann, editor-in-chief of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology journal, which published the research told The Telegraph: "We may never be able to call bacon a health food with a straight face, but [similar studies] are already making us rethink what we consider healthy and unhealthy." Other foods that contain a high level of the nutrient include liver, milk, chicken and nuts. Previous studies have suggested that large doses of choline could help protect against heart problems.

So, pregnant women could just drink milk or eat nuts to get choline, rather than eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. Of course, the article leaves this important fact until its penultimate sentence, because otherwise it wouldn't seem especially interesting. For instance, here's a headline you won't be seeing:

Liver and Milk Good for Fetuses

That would be as accurate as the actual headline, but how many people would bother to read the following article? Instead, the real headline gets your attention by playing upon wishful thinking: wouldn't it be so nice if bacon and eggs were actually good for you?

The Daily Mail isn't the only British newspaper to run this story: both the Telegraph and the Express also ran almost identical stories with similar headlines (see the Resources below).

Source: Anny Shaw, "Bacon and eggs could help pregnant women boost their baby's intelligence", Mail Online, 1/6/2010

Resources:

Acknowledgment: The illustration is a detail of a painting by Salvador Dalí.

January 21st, 2010 (Permalink)

Check 'Em Out

  • (1/24/2010) Michael Shermer's latest "Skeptic" column concerns how a feeling of helplessness or loss of control may contribute to seeing patterns where none exist. Oversensitivity to patterns may be one source of causal fallacies, together with the development of superstitions. Many superstitions appear to be the result of fallacious causal reasoning; for instance, a ballplayer who has a "lucky" hat because he wore it in a game where he hit a home run. Similarly, the tendency to see nonexistent patterns in random data may well be the primary explanation of conspiracy theories.

    Natural selection probably tends to favor animals who are highly sensitive to patterns, especially causal patterns of a threatening nature. An animal that sees a predator in the brush and runs away, even when none is there, may live to have offspring, whereas one that fails to see the predator in the brush when one is there will become a meal. Similarly, a predator that sees an animal hiding in the brush when none is there may waste some time and energy, but one that fails to see one when it's there will miss a meal. Of course, there's some point at which too many false alarms would become a problem, but a considerable tolerance for false positives probably has survival value.

    Pattern recognition is one thing that human beings do very well; in fact, it's the one talent in which we still far exceed computers. But the price we pay for being so sensitive to patterns is finding them where they're not.

    Source: Michael Shermer, "How a Lack of Control Leads to Superstition", Scientific American, 2/2010

  • (1/23/2010) Volokh conspirator Ilya Somin comments on the appeal to celebrity in politics:
    …I don’t see why anyone should pay any particular attention to the political views of [Curt] Schilling and other celebrities. …[I]f you read his blog…, I think it’s clear that his expertise on political issues is not much greater than that of the average voter. I would say the same thing for most of the other sports and entertainment industry celebrities who make political endorsements and expound on political issues. Voters should generally discount such statements, except in the rare instances where the celebrity in question has some genuine insight into the subject. That’s not a criticism of Schilling and the other celebrities. He has his field of expertise, and he’s certainly been more successful at his profession than 99.9% of the rest of us have been in ours (myself included). And of course celebrities are entitled to their political opinions. The real fault lies with the voters and media who pay much more attention to celebrities’ political pronouncements than they should.

    Well said, but I disagree with one claim: I don't know about Schilling in particular, but many celebrities are partially to blame because they exploit their fame for political purposes. However, the greatest blame does attach to those who pay attention to celebrity opinions, especially the media. If people would stop listening to the political opinions of baseball players and television actors, there would be nothing for them to exploit.

    Why, then, do many voters pay attention to the political statements of celebrities―so much so that candidates find it worth their while to include them in ads? …I suspect it has to do with political ignorance and irrationality. Most citizens know little about politics, and have little incentive to rationally analyze the limited information they do have. As a result, many of them are influenced by celebrity endorsements in ways they would not be if they were better informed. Schilling’s endorsement of Brown is unlikely to sway highly knowledgeable voters and those already strongly committed to one side. But in a close race, it may affect the decisions of some swing voters. On average, swing voters tend to have the lowest levels of political information.

    I certainly agree that irrationality is at work here, since the appeal to celebrity is irrational. However, I don't see what political ignorance has to do with it. For instance, I don't live in Massachusetts and am about as ignorant of that state's politics as can be, but I wouldn't take a baseball player's advice on who to root for in the election. The problem is not political ignorance, but logical ignorance.

    Source: Ilya Somin, "Coakley vs. Curt Schilling", The Volokh Conspiracy, 1/18/2010

  • Ben Goldacre's most recent "Bad Science" column is an object lesson in the importance of considering all the evidence, as opposed to picking and choosing what supports your pet theory.

    Source: Ben Goldacre, "Did aliens help to line up Woolworths stores?", Guardian, 1/16/2010

January 18th, 2010 (Permalink)

Q&A

Q: I've had trouble categorizing a logical fallacy I'm encountering more and more often. The argument usually takes the form:

  1. P is a statement about Person X.
  2. X protests that P is inaccurate or untrue.
  3. Therefore, P is true.

Examples I can give―not actual examples, just simplified summations from the arguments I've witnessed:

  • X complains about being called a simple-minded jingoist; therefore, he must be a simple-minded jingoist.
  • X is accused, among other things, of being a child molester. X insists that he is not a child molester; thereupon, X is presumed to have something to hide.

The objection, of course, being that X's opinion of P (a statement about him) has no bearing on P's truth or falsity; if P is a criticism of X, there is no way to logically infer that it is an accurate criticism from the simple fact that X complains about it. Is there already a category of fallacy that this argument could be squeezed into, or do you suppose that it's some new mutation?―Jacob C.

A: These sound like cases of poisoning the well, and as such are not a new phenomenon. It's not so much a logical fallacy as a rhetorical move aimed at putting an opponent at an argumentative disadvantage. For instance, if you accuse someone of being an habitual liar, that person's denial can then be dismissed as another lie. One of my favorite examples is "You talk too much!": if you try to defend yourself against this accusation, you may seem to be merely confirming it. Another good one is "You just like to argue!" Try arguing against that!

When the well has been successfully poisoned, it's heads they win, tales you lose. If you don't deny the charge, that may be taken as an admission of guilt. If you do deny it, that may also be taken to be proof of guilt. This is what is so insidious about poisoning the well.

Because of this "damned if you do, damned if you don't" quality, the only defense is to confront it directly. Point out the unfairness of an accusation that you cannot defend yourself against, and then hope that your audience will be convinced to give your defense a fair hearing.

January 14th, 2010 (Permalink)

Doublespeak Dictionary

Doublespeak Definition
At hope Poor

Here's a good example of euphemism inflation:

Decades ago, poor children became known as "disadvantaged" to soften the stigma of poverty. Then they were "at-risk." Now, a Washington lawmaker wants to replace those euphemisms with a new one, "at hope."

Euphemism inflation is the process in which euphemisms lose their value over time and must be replaced. William Lutz, in his book Doublespeak Defined of 1999, documented the use of "economically disadvantaged" as a euphemism for "poor". "Economically disadvantaged" is actually closer in meaning to "poor" than just plain "disadvantaged", since poverty is only one of many ways to be disadvantaged. However, the full phrase is quite a mouthful, so it's no wonder that "economically" was dropped.

When that euphemism wore out, "at risk" was introduced. Presumably, "at risk" is narrower in application than "disadvantaged", since it's usually only children who are "at risk". Poor adults would be included among the "disadvantaged", but it would sound strange to call them "at risk".

What are those poor children at risk of? Not poverty, since they're already poor. My guess is that "at risk" began its career as an educational euphemism, where the risk was probably that of dropping out of school―I've certainly heard the phrase used that way. Lutz does not mention "at risk" as a euphemism for poverty, so far as I can tell. So, unless Lutz missed it―which is certainly possible―it may have come into use after 1999. If so, then the effective life of a euphemism may be about ten years.

The Washington lawmaker in question, Rosa Franklin, thinks that "at risk", which started out its career as a euphemism for "disadvantaged", is a "negative label":

Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids' chances for success and she's not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in state law where words like "at risk" and "disadvantaged" are used. … "We really put too many negatives on our kids," the state Senate's president pro tem says. "We need to come up with positive terms."

This illustrates how words or phrases that begin as "positive" terms eventually take on a negative charge from association with an unpleasant concept. Hence, the felt need for new euphemisms every decade or two.

Though euphemisms, "disadvantaged" and "at risk" are at least meaningful English, while "at hope" is barely English at all. Of course, the words "at" and "hope" are English, but what do they mean when put together? "Children at risk" is an imprecise concept, but at least it means something. What does "children at hope" mean? You can't just take two random words of English, stick them together, and expect the result to be meaningful.

I assume what happened is that Franklin wanted to replace the "negative" word "risk" in "at risk" with a positive word, and latched onto the trendy "hope", which was popularized during the campaign of our current president. "Children at change" would've been confusing, and "children at hope and change" would've been too long and too partisan.

I'll give Tom Pink the final word:

"While I respect what the legislator wants to do, I think we can all agree that changing the words doesn't change the problem," Pink says, adding "it maybe even takes [sic] attention away from what perhaps should really be happening."

Sources:

Update (1/29/2009): Anne Soukhanov, in her book Word Watch of 1995, says that "at-risk" is a "cliché that began in the eighties". If that's the case, then the lifespan of a euphemism may be longer than I speculated above. Also, if the timeline of the article is correct, then "disadvantaged" must be an even older euphemism for "poor". This seems plausible to me, as I can't now recall a time when "disadvantaged" wasn't used to refer to poor people.

Source: Anne H. Soukhanov, Word Watch: The Stories Behind the Words of Our Lives (1995), p. 56.

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