Straw man

2009-11-04

“A straw man is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue.
The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern:

  1. Topic A is under discussion.
  2. Topic B is introduced under guise of being equivalent to topic A.
  3. A participant (usually the one who introduced B) attacks B, as if it were A.”.

(from Wikipedia)

Categories : language, psychology