What is the “weak man” fallacy? Well, you can read it explained here:
a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does.
The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to have a nice example with this article on violent video games. Rather than argue about violence in video games with, I don’t know, Dr. Craig A. Anderson of Iowa State University, whose APA fact sheet seems to include reference to many peer-reviewed articles showing empirical studies on the subject spanning many years, the author picks on Senator Clinton of New York and Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. They of course, do not have the best reasons of all the people who hold the same point of view.
But wait, there’s not only a “weak man” fallacy, there is also a “straw man” fallacy. Did you catch it? Go ahead and look, I’ll put it below the jump.
Here’s what I came up with as my answer:
Critics warn that anyone who plays the game will end up doing in the real world exactly what they do in the virtual world. In other words, watch out for a run on missile launchers and vigilante strippers.
Now, let’s go back to what the APA fact sheet says:
But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior. Average effect sizes for experimental studies (which help establish causality) and correlational studies (which allow examination of serious violent behavior) appear comparable (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).
That is hardly the same claim that is attributed to the anonymous and ominous sounding “critics” in the Chronicle piece.
