One-sidedness

I stumbled upon a new fallacy.

One-Sidedness

Alias:

• Card Stacking
• Ignoring the Counterevidence
• One-Sided Assessment
• Slanting
• Suppressed Evidence

Type: Informal Fallacy

Example:

You've spoke about having seen the children's prisons in Iraq. Can you describe what you saw there?

The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children—toddlers up to pre-adolescents—whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace.

Source: Massimo Calabresi, "Scott Ritter in His Own Words", Time, 9/14/2002

Exposition:

A one-sided case presents only evidence favoring its conclusion, and ignores or downplays the evidence against it. In inductive reasoning, it is important to consider all of the available evidence before coming to a conclusion. For example, suppose that you have observed several white swans; then you might conclude:

All swans are white.

However, if you have observed even one black swan, you should not come to this conclusion. Instead, you might draw one of the weaker conclusions:

• Almost all swans are white.
• Most swans are white.
• Typically, swans are white.

So, the total evidence available to you consists in observations of several white swans and a black one. Whatever conclusion that you draw needs to be consistent with this evidence, but "all swans are white" is inconsistent with there being even one black swan. To leave the black swan out of your reasoning would be One-sidedness.





The swan example almost sounds like Appeal to Ignorance.