Fallacy

34 Clamorous Insistence on Irrelevancies: "red herring"
One way of hiding the weakness of a position is to draw noisy and insistent attention to a side-issue. The side-issue may be the character of an opponent, who is damned vigorously while the argument gets lost in personalities (see #20). Or it may be some movement or group that serves as a whipping post. This, the red-herring technique, is the tactic of the familiar speaker who, instead of meeting the real question, turns his talk into an attack on international communism, or Wall Street, or whatever else will deflect the attention of the audience. Such speakers often lose all sense of proportion, they pettifog, they make much of little and little of much. They talk of anything except the issue, at great length, with much noise and sawing of the air. We all are addicted to this fallacy. It is, of necessity, the patron saint of those being overwhelmed in argument.
EXAMPLE COMMENT
Accused of having misbid his hand, Mr. Peter points out that his partner is always picking on him. "How can I play good bridge when nothing I do pleases you?" he complains. A relatively innocent side-issue. Moreover, there is a flavor of justice in the complaint; it is hard to think well while being constantly criticized. Notice, however, that Peter merely defends himself, not his bid.
In an article entitled Does Retroactive Punishment Endanger Civil Liberty? a jurist writes in a Nazi law review: "Shocking though the concept of retroactive punishment may be to the liberal concept of justice, it must be recognized on occasion that such punishment is both necessary and right: otherwise clearly immoral acts will go unpunished. For example, in 1902 a certain individual who completed a phone call with a lead slug was brought to trial but had to be acquitted since this act did not amount to theft or to any other offense for which a penalty was then prescribed. When such loopholes exist, retroactive punishment is needed to vindicate the law." This is a phantom issue. Crime in any nation is a phenomenon with an annual volume of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of cases. From a criminological point of view it is not a problem when an occasional instance of anti-social conduct goes unpunished, though from a moral point of view it is repugnant. In any event, the great cause of escape from legal punishment is not the occasional loophole in law, but the difficulties of apprehension of criminals and proof of their guilt. Though occasional loopholes are bound to occur, appropriate legislation is readily available to close them for the future. To cure the evil of one or a few rogues going unscathed by granting the state the power of retroactive punishment, a power notoriously open to abuse, is to apply a violent remedy to a slight malaise.

EXAMPLE	COMMENT
Accused of having misbid his hand, Mr. Peter points out that his partner is always picking on him. "How can I play good bridge when nothing I do pleases you?" he complains.	A relatively innocent side-issue. Moreover, there is a flavor of justice in the complaint; it is hard to think well while being constantly criticized. Notice, however, that Peter merely defends himself, not his bid.
In an article entitled Does Retroactive Punishment Endanger Civil Liberty? a jurist writes in a Nazi law review: "Shocking though the concept of retroactive punishment may be to the liberal concept of justice, it must be recognized on occasion that such punishment is both necessary and right: otherwise clearly immoral acts will go unpunished. For example, in 1902 a certain individual who completed a phone call with a lead slug was brought to trial but had to be acquitted since this act did not amount to theft or to any other offense for which a penalty was then prescribed. When such loopholes exist, retroactive punishment is needed to vindicate the law."	This is a phantom issue. Crime in any nation is a phenomenon with an annual volume of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of cases. From a criminological point of view it is not a problem when an occasional instance of anti-social conduct goes unpunished, though from a moral point of view it is repugnant. In any event, the great cause of escape from legal punishment is not the occasional loophole in law, but the difficulties of apprehension of criminals and proof of their guilt. Though occasional loopholes are bound to occur, appropriate legislation is readily available to close them for the future. To cure the evil of one or a few rogues going unscathed by granting the state the power of retroactive punishment, a power notoriously open to abuse, is to apply a violent remedy to a slight malaise.