False equivalence
Treating two things as equivalent because they share a feature, when they differ in scale, kind, or consequence so much that the comparison misleads.
Comparison is how we judge, and the device feeds it a rigged pair. A parking fine and a fraud are "both breaking the law"; a factual error and a fabrication are "both mistakes"; one death and a thousand are "both tragedies." The shared word is real, and the audience, hearing it, lets the smaller thing borrow the weight of the larger or the larger thing shrink to the size of the smaller, depending on what the speaker needs.
False balance is the journalistic form, two sources treated as equal; false equivalence is the general one, two things. It is the engine of "both sides do it," which converts any difference of degree into a tie. Exploits Anchoring and Representativeness Heuristic.
Historical examples
Industry spokesmen answered evidence on second-hand smoke by comparing it with car exhaust, city air, and fried food: all contain the same chemicals, all are risks, "so where do you stop?" The comparison was built on a shared feature and ignored dose, exposure, and the measured effect. Internal documents show the comparison was a prepared line.
Proctor, Robert N. Golden Holocaust. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011; Ong, Elisa K., and Stanton A. Glantz. "Tobacco Industry Efforts Subverting International Agency for Research on Cancer's Second-Hand Smoke Study." The Lancet 355, no. 9211 (2000): 1253–1259.
The Lees recorded Father Coughlin's habit of equating the New Deal with communism and international banking with the same on the strength of a shared feature, usually "control," so that the listener's fear of one moved to the other. The move was so regular that they treated it as a signature of the broadcasts.
Lee, Alfred McClung, and Elizabeth Briant Lee. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
In advertising and commerce
"A glass of our juice has as much sugar as an apple" (the apple has fiber and the glass has three apples' worth), "our fee is less than a cup of coffee a day" (the coffee is optional and the fee is not): comparative claims that rest on one shared number and omit the rest are a marketing staple, and regulators' guidance on comparative advertising warns against exactly this.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013; Federal Trade Commission. Statement of Policy Regarding Comparative Advertising, 1979.
Find a claim that two things are "the same" or "no different." List three ways they differ. Do the differences matter more than the similarity?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
"The senator misstated a date. The other one fabricated a war record. Both lied, so let's move on."
What to notice. Two things that share a word are made a tie; the difference in kind and consequence is erased.
"Second-hand smoke, car exhaust, a barbecue: it's all particles in the air. Where do you draw the line?"
What to notice. A shared feature makes unequal exposures equivalent, and the rhetorical question closes the comparison.
"Our subscription costs less than a coffee a day." Both are true; only one is required every day for a year.
What to notice. A comparison on one shared number, omitting the differences that make it misleading.
Sources
- Ong, Elisa K., and Stanton A. Glantz. "Tobacco Industry Efforts Subverting International Agency for Research on Cancer's Second-Hand Smoke Study." The Lancet 355, no. 9211 (2000): 1253–1259. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)02098-5
- Walton, Douglas. Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0521713801
- Proctor, Robert N. Golden Holocaust. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0520270169
- Lee, Alfred McClung, and Elizabeth Briant Lee. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.