Related fallacies and rhetorical techniques.

As such, in the following article you will see examples of red herrings, learn more about red herrings and about the red herring fallacy, and understand how you can properly respond to people who use red herrings in a fallacious manner. For example, if a politician is asked how they feel about a certain policy, they might use the red herring fallacy by discussing how they feel about a related topic instead, to distract people from their failure to answer the original question.īecause red herrings are frequently used in a variety of contexts, it’s important to understand this concept. The red herring fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone presents irrelevant information in an attempt to distract others from a topic that’s being discussed, often to avoid a question or shift the discussion in a new direction. When it comes to rhetoric, the use of red herrings is often referred to as the ‘red herring fallacy’. Red herrings are usually used either as a literary device, such as when an author uses a side character to divert attention from another character, or as a rhetoric technique, such as when someone responds to a question with unrelated information in order to hide their refusal to answer the original question. A red herring is a piece of information that’s meant to distract people from something important in a misleading manner.

Example of red herring fallacy