Mike Carrell wrote:
> thieves, still chose to partner up with them - to the degree that
> they added the CEO of EDS to their own board.
MC: Jones, this is guilt by association. Senior officers of corporations
often sit on the boards of other corporations . . .
No, this is not "guilt by association." This is an actual business
associate. If, as claimed, he consorts with unethical people those are
perfectly reasonable grounds to doubt his ethics. Guilt by association is a
logical fallacy:
"Guilt by Association is a fallacy in which a person rejects a claim simply
because it is pointed out that people she dislikes accept the claim. . . .
1. It is pointed out that people person A does not like accept claim P.
2. Therefore P is false
[Example] 'You think that 1+1=2. But, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Joseph
Stalin, and Ted Bundy all believed that 1+1=2. So, you shouldn't believe it.'"
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by-association.html
Along the same lines, there is a great deal of confusion about another
logical fallacy, "appeal to authority." Skeptics often mistakenly accuse
cold fusion supporters of this fallacy. If I say: "John Bockris says there
is no recombination in his experiments," that is not an appeal to authority
because Bockris is actually a world-class authority on electrochemistry.
This fallacy is more accurately known as "fallacious appeal to authority,"
"misuse of authority" or "irrelevant authority." When a skeptic says: "Gary
Taubes says there was recombination in Bockris' experiment," that is a
fallacious appeal to authority, because Taubes does not know an anode from
a cathode.
- Jed
