Talk:Bandwagon fallacy

Example needed
Need a new example. The smoking example doesn't work - it would only be appropriate if lots of people believed that smoking was healthy, which patently they don't. Will try to get round to adding a new example, but I'm just writing this note in case anyone else can get there first! Toby W


 * Indeed it does not work:
 * "an objective criterion, such as the health effects of smoking."
 * No matter what some people may prefer to believe "the health effects of smoking" are not "an objective criterion" but a subjective interpretation. Most likely it's a question of confusing tobacco smoking with tobacco abuse.
 * --Troels Nybo 16:18, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Invitation
Work is currently in progress on a page entitled Views of Creationists and mainstream scientists compared. Also currently being worked upon is NPOV (Comparison of views in science) giving guidelines for this type of page. It is meant to be a set of guidelines for NPOV in this setting. People knowledgable in many areas of science and the philosophy of science are greatly needed here. And all are needed to ensure the guidelines correctly represent NPOV in this setting. :) Barnaby dawson 21:30, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Distinction from expert witness or consensus
The bandwagon fallacy is not made when appealing to an expert authority or a consensus of credible experts. (I am adding this line to the article.)--Peter Kirby 23:36, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Renaming and Merging proposal
This logical fallacy is known by many names (reference) and has several redundant Wikipedia articles. I propose the following actions:

1) Rename "Bandwagon fallacy" as "argumentum ad populum". This requires consensus and an administrator's action. 2) Merge "Appeal to belief" and "Argumentum ad numerum" into "argumentum ad populum"

Reason #1: Google test
 * A search using the ("fallacy" + the following terms) returned these hits:
 * argumentum ad populum  10000 (most commonly used term)
 * appeal to belief        1110
 * Argumentum ad numerum   1010
 * appeal to popularity     872
 * appeal to the people     746
 * Bandwagon fallacy        646
 * appeal to the majority   558
 * consensus gentium        213
 * authority of the many    204
 * appeal to the gallery    198
 * argument by consensus    179

Reason #2: Article's length of existance The following article has existed since:
 * Bandwagon fallacy      25 Feb 2002 (oldest article)
 * Appeal to belief       28 May 2003
 * Argumentum ad numerum   3 Sep 2004

Please comment or vote on this proposal. Shawnc 16:53, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

(off topic: the Google test was strangely reminiscent of the bandwagon effect idea. Of course, the test is not a logical argument but merely done for convenient purposes)


 * Support. Redundancy is a terrible thing. -Silence 01:32, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. And a much more ambitious goal would be to standardize the naming of all logical fallacy articles. Look at Category:Logical fallacies, it's all over the map. -- Tyler 02:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think it would be possible to make the article names consistent, because in general article names are not based on being consistent with other articles, but rather with what the most commonly-used name is. Hence the Google hits importance. However, you bring up an interesting point that it would be very useful to at least have lists available that are consistently named, and could simply link to the inconsistently named actual pages. That way we'd get the best of every world. In other words, as I see it, we would have three lists: (1) the list of the actual article names on Logical fallacy, based on the subdivisions each one fits into (i.e. types of ad hominem arguments should go under "ad hominem"; only alphabetize once everything's already in its proper part of the page in this way), (2) the list of Latin/Greek names of all the fallacies that have them, in pure alphabetical order, and (3) the list of English names of all the fallacies that have them, in pure alphabetical order. Any interest in this possibility? -Silence 06:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * i took Shawnc's ideas and merged everything into argumnetum ad numerum. tell me what you think.
 * Actually, the proposed target was "argumentum ad populum", based on the Google test. In addition, the merge should ideally be based on renaming the article, as opposed to copying and pasting.  However since this has not yet been done, I did a basic copy to argumentum ad populum. Shawnc 21:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)