Fallacy Files

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Latest posts

• A Headline for Hallowe'en

  "New Genus of Nightmare Spaghetti Worms Found Deep Under the Indian Ocean"....

• Weasel Words Ripped My Flesh

  What are weasel words? First things first: what is a weasel? A weasel is a type of carnivorous mammal, related to ferrets and polecats. Weasels are long and thin with short legs, and so able to hunt animals such as rabbits and voles in their burrows....

• More Fake Polls

  Just two months ago, there was an unprecedented case of a "pollster" who faked polls. The fake pollster in question claimed that the hoax was a "social experiment" intended to show how polling misinformation can spread without independent verification--it certainly showed that…

• There's a Sucker Born Every Second

  On a cool autumn day, Montgomery Banks was back at the carnival, and this time he had a spinner on top of his counter. The circular face of the spinner was divided into two sections, as shown: a large red section, making up three-fourths of the spinner's face, and a small green…

• Puzzle: Pop Quiz

  Assuming that the following statements are either true of false, which if any are true?...

• This Headline Sucks

  I was puzzled by the following headline: "Ryanair will dispute passenger's claim he was sucked out of window"....

• Very Hot Java Jive

  Most of the previous entries in this series on the supposed health effects of coffee have been about claims that coffee is good for you, but rarely a study claims that drinking coffee is the opposite. Here's a recent one....

• Roll-Playing

  In a foreword to a book about the use of mathematics in magic tricks, Martin Gardner wrote: "You will learn how parity (odd or even) can play a roll in magic as well as provide powerful shortcut proofs." How do you a play a roll? If you're a drummer, you can play a drumroll, but…

• Straw Polls

  Something calling itself "Median Strategies" put out press releases claiming to have done three different polls: one for the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin, another for the contest for the governor of Nevada, and finally one for the race for mayor of Los Angeles.…

• "Newsweak" Nostradamus

  Check out the dueling headlines: "Gas Prices Predicted To Hit Five-Year Low in 2026" and "Gas Prices on Course To Beat 2022 Record: Which States Are Charging Most?"...

• Crack the Binary Combination

  In previous "Crack the Combination" puzzles, the combination has always been decimal, that is, the digits in the combination were the ten from 0 to 9. Now, the combination lock you need to open has a binary combination of five of the two binary digits--"bits"--0 and 1. The…

• Notes and Quotes: Sylvia Plath, Vigilante, Caveat Lector and Post-Reality

  Headline: "The latest historical fiction books take inspiration from Sylvia Plath, a New York vigilante and Shah of Iran"....

• 100% MORE!

  I recently saw an advertisement for an expensive electric toothbrush that made me wonder whether I should purchase one. My current toothbrush has the advantage that it's cheap, but how good does it clean my teeth? Should I pay over ten times as much for a replacement?...

• Sorry, "Wrong Number"!

  "An individual study is a brick, and it only proves itself when incorporated into a useful structure. Bad bricks either get rejected as not fitting into the structure, or exposed when things built on them collapse. But the Wrong Numbers you'll find in this book do not try to fit…

• Sow and Sew

  The words "so", "sew", and "sow", in descending order of familiarity, are homophones, that is, they are pronounced identically. "So" is a common and highly ambiguous word with too many meanings to list, but what is important for our purposes is that in most of those meanings…

• Independence Day at the Logicians' Club

  Those fun-loving logicians of the Logicians' Club celebrate Independence Day each year with a patriotic puzzle party, and what a wild party it is! This year's party was even wilder than usual since it celebrated the 250th anniversary of American independence. Here's how it…

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