False attribution

Short description: Credit for a work given to the wrong person

False attribution can refer to:

* Misattribution in general, when a quotation or work is accidentally, traditionally, or based on bad information attributed to the wrong person or group
* A specific fallacy where an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased, or fabricated source in support of an argument.[1]

## Contents

* 1 Incorrect identification of source
* 2 Fallacy
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
* 6 External links

## Incorrect identification of source

One particular case of misattribution is the Matthew effect. A quotation is often attributed to someone more famous than the real author. This leads the quotation to be more famous, but the real author to be forgotten (see also: obliteration by incorporation and Churchillian Drift).[2]

Such misattributions may originate as a sort of fallacious argument, if use of the quotation is meant to be persuasive, and attachment to a more famous person (whether intentionally or through misremembering) would lend it more authority.

In Jewish biblical studies, an entire group of falsely-attributed books is known as the pseudepigrapha.

## Fallacy

A fraudulent advocate may go so far as to fabricate a source in order to support a claim. For example, the "Levitt Institute" was a fake organisation created in 2009 solely for the purposes of (successfully) fooling the Australia n media into reporting that Sydney was Australia’s most naive city.[3]

Contextomy (quoting out of context) is a type of false attribution.[4]

## See also

* Fake news

## References

1. ↑ Humbug! The skeptic’s field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking, a textbook on fallacies. "False Attribution": p. 56.
2. ↑ Mermin, N. David (2004). "Could Feynman Have Said This?". Physics Today 57 (5): 10–11. doi:10.1063/1.1768652. Bibcode: 2004PhT....57e..10M.
3. ↑ "Deception Detection Deficiency". 2009-09-27. Archived from the original on 2021-12-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20211216072721/https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/deception-detection-deficiency/9974778.
4. ↑ McGlone, Matthew S. (2005). "Quoted Out of Context: Contextomy and Its Consequences". Journal of Communication 55 (2): 330–346. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2005.tb02675.x.

## Further reading

* Garson O'Toole (2017). Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations. Little A. ISBN 978-1503933408.

## External links

* Quote Investigator

* v
* t
* e

Fallacies (list)

Formal|

| In propositional logic|

* Affirming a disjunct
* Affirming the consequent
* Denying the antecedent
* Argument from fallacy

|

In quantificational logic|

* Existential
* Illicit conversion
* Proof by example
* Quantifier shift

Syllogistic fallacy|

* Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise
* Exclusive premises
* Existential
* Necessity
* Four terms
* Illicit major
* Illicit minor
* Negative conclusion from affirmative premises
* Undistributed middle

* Masked man
* Mathematical fallacy

Informal|

| Equivocation|

* Equivocation
* False equivalence
* False attribution
* Quoting out of context
* Loki's Wager
* No true Scotsman
* Reification

|

Question-begging fallacies|

* Circular reasoning / Begging the question
* Loaded language
* Leading question
* Compound question / Loaded question / Complex question
* No true Scotsman

Correlative-based fallacies|

* False dilemma
* Perfect solution
* Denying the correlative
* Suppressed correlative

Illicit transference|

* Composition
* Division
* Ecological

Secundum quid
(ignoring qualifications)|

* Accident
* Converse accident

Faulty generalization|

* Anecdotal evidence
* Sampling bias
* Cherry picking
* McNamara
* Base rate / Conjunction
* Double counting
* False analogy
* Slothful induction
* Overwhelming exception

Vagueness / Ambiguity|

* Accent
* Syntactic ambiguity
* Continuum
* Sorites paradox
* False precision
* Moving the goalposts
* Slippery slope
* Quoting out of context

Questionable cause|

* Animistic
* Furtive
* Correlation implies causation
* Cum hoc
* Post hoc
* Gambler's
* Inverse
* Regression
* Single cause
* Slippery slope
* Texas sharpshooter

Fallacies of relevance|

| Appeals to emotion|

* Fear
* Flattery
* Novelty
* Pity
* Ridicule
* Think of the children
* In-group favoritism
* Invented here / Not invented here
* Island mentality
* Loyalty
* Parade of horribles
* Spite
* Stirring symbols
* Wisdom of repugnance

|

Genetic fallacies|

| Ad hominem|

* Abusive
* Association
* Reductio ad Hitlerum
* Godwin's law
* Reductio ad Stalinum
* Circumstantial
* Appeal to motive
* Bulverism
* Poisoning the well
* Tone
* Tu quoque
* Whataboutism

|

* Authority
* Accomplishment
* Ipse dixit
* Poverty / Wealth
* Etymology
* Nature
* Tradition / Novelty
* Chronological snobbery

Appeals to consequences|

* Argumentum ad baculum
* Wishful thinking

* Ad nauseam
* Argument to moderation
* Argumentum ad populum
* Appeal to the stone / Proof by assertion
* Ignoratio elenchi
* Argument from silence
* Invincible ignorance
* Moralistic / Naturalistic
* Motte-and-bailey fallacy
* Rationalization
* Red herring
* Appeal to worse problems
* Two wrongs make a right
* Special pleading
* Straw man
* Cliché
* I'm entitled to my opinion

* Categories
* Fallacies
* Formal fallacies
* Informal fallacies
* List
* Philosophy portal

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