Weekly Roundup: logical fallacies in the news
Mid-January was a rough time for logic, except at VOX
Newsflash: there is a lot of bias and bad reasoning in the news! Maybe it’s time somebody tried to quantify it, article by article. If not us, who? If not now …
We analyzed over a dozen opinion columns using the credAIble bot for this inaugural report. The typical column had three or four logical fallacies that our ChatGPT detected, and rare was the author without a notable ideology in their viewpoint. Most of the included columns were published in the past seven days, with a couple recent classics from earlier. These can be best viewed using the web interface at credaible.com
The most impressive result was an inequality explainer by Dylan Matthews at VOX.
Do we really live in an "age of inequality"?
Dylan Matthews, VOX, January 11, 2024
Viewpoint: Neutral
Fallacies: None
Click for detailed analysis >
So let’s give him a well-deserved three cheers.
None of us at credAIble have ever met Dylan, FYI. To be clear, we submitted columns by personal friends to the credAIble x-ray, and we had to check our own biases when the AI said there were fallacies where we mere humans saw unobjectionable if strongly worded arguments. We promise to keep shooting straight and not adjust results based on mere human relationships.
Four columns that appeared in the New York Times were included in this first batch because that publication has a reputation for excessively liberal bias. The authors were Jamelle Bouie, Maureen Dowd, Zeynep Tufekci and Paul Krugman. A “Strong Left” viewpoint was found by credAIble in all four pieces. There were, to be sure, columns by other guests and regular columnists in the Times that would probably have gotten moderate or right-leaning scores, though it should be noted none of those in this batch were scored as “Extreme.”
Interestingly, each of the Times columns was found to have five logical fallacies. Ideally, the algorithm would provided a severity score for each fallacy. For example, our assessment is that Krugman makes rather egregious leaps of logic whereas Dowd is knowingly sarcastic. For now, we are using a simpler algorithm that identifies the fallacy without trying to gauge its severity.
Here is razzy award for the essay of the week with the most logical fallacies:
Iowa Republicans miss an opportunity, hand Trump a massive win
Steve Benen, MSNBC, January 16, 2024
Viewpoint: Strong Left
Fallacies: 7
Appeal to Emotion, False Dilemma, Biased Language, Hasty Generalization, Ad Hominem, Slippery Slope, Loaded Question
Want to recommend an article for evaluation?
Send the link to tylerckohrt@gmail.com
