It attacks your opponent rather than attacking his/her position. First, it’s nothing more than an ad hominem fallacy. The problems with this response are numerous. So, for example, when I explain the science of vaccines to anti-vaccers, they frequently respond by saying, “you’re just supporting vaccines because you’re a shill for Big Pharma.” To describe it briefly, this occurs whenever you simply accuse your opponent of being paid off rather than actually engaging with their arguments. Many other commentators on science have explained the problems with it, so I will try not to belabor the point too much. This tactic, often called the shill gambit, is perhaps the most common flawed strategy. Finally, even if the position you are arguing for is actually correct, these strategies are so flawed that I would still contend that using them automatically costs you the debate itself (it is technically possible to lose a debate, but still be right). As such, their use does generally indicate a critical problem that must be taken seriously. Nevertheless, these strategies generally arise as a result of a fundamental weakness in the position that is being defended. ![]() When I say that you lost, I am obviously being somewhat facetious because the fact that you used a bad argument doesn’t inherently mean that your position itself is flawed (that would be a fallacy fallacy). ![]() If you commit one of these, then you have automatically lost the debate. So in this post, I am going to describe seven fundamentally flawed, yet extremely common debate tactics that you should watch out for and avoid at all cost. In fact, I have rarely been in a debate where my opponent did not at some point commit one of these. ![]() Specifically, there are several flawed debate strategies that anti-scientists frequently employ. Having devoted so much time to this endeavor has, however, allowed me to observe certain patterns and trends in their debate tactics. One of the saddest statistics about my life is the amount of time that I spend pointlessly debating anti-scientists.
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