Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Welcome back for another episode of the FitABC podcast, where you get a little harder to fool everytime you listen!
Let’s start off with a quick review before we dive into today’s new fallacy. Let’s review The Historian’s Fallacy. Hit pause real quick and see if you can remember what the Historian’s Fallacy is! The Historian’s Fallacy happens when people look back at something that happened in the past and judge the people’s actions & decisions based on the knowledge or information that’s available now, but wasn’t available then.
The question to ask yourself for the Historian’s Fallacy is this: “Is this really something they could have known was going to happen or is that just the benefit of hindsight?”
If you want to hear more about this fallacy, check out Episode 79.
Ok, the new fallacy we’re learning about today is called The Burden of Proof Fallacy. Burden of Proof simply means the person who is responsible for proving a claim. So, the Burden of Proof fallacy happens when the responsibility to prove a claim is put on the wrong person. Typically, the burden of proof belongs to the person making the claim, so it’s wrong to make a claim and expect someone else to prove it’s wrong. Sometimes you’ll hear this fallacy referred to as Shifting the Burden of Proof or Misplaced Burden of Proof. And yes, there are some similarities to the Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy that we talked about in Episode 28, but Burden of Proof is an important concept, so I wanted to give it its own episode.
A simple example of the Burden of Proof Fallacy is if John were to accuse a fellow student of cheating on a math test. The question the math teacher is going to ask is, “How do you know, what proof do you have that he cheated?” John can’t say, “Well why don’t you have him prove he didn’t cheat b/c I guarantee he can’t prove it”. That would be ridiculous. If John is going to accuse him of cheating, he’s the one who needs to have proof that the other student actually cheated.
The problem behind the burden of proof fallacy is that you can’t just say stuff, give no proof of what you’re saying and expect other people to defend against what you’re saying. You have to make a case. You have to offer evidence and produce good arguments for what you’re saying! You’ve probably heard the phrase, “innocent until proven guilty”. In our legal system, a person is (or is supposed to be!) assumed innocent unless the prosecution can make a good case and convince the judge or jury that the person is innocent. The burden of proof is on them to back up their accusation. In formal debate, the burden of proof is on the Affirmative team to show how the changes they’re proposing are necessary, helpful and will actually solve the problem. And if I’m out here saying that unicorns are a real thing, the burden of proof is on me to prove that it’s true, it’s nobody else’s responsibility since I’m the one making the claim.
Another way we see the Burden of Proof Fallacy is when someone denies or refutes a well-documented and accepted fact or theory. For instance, let’s take gravity. The law of gravity has been around & accepted for over 300 years. I have heard some people who believe in a flat earth claim that there is no such thing as gravity, that what we experience as gravity is actually our earth moving upwards in space. Now, I’m not here to argue the points of the laws of gravity or flat earth beliefs, and I’m not getting into that so don’t send me emails about it, lol…All I’m saying is that when someone is making a claim that’s counter to an established and/or long-accepted belief, they need to provide proof, they need to make a case for it. They can’t just say, well, prove to me that earth isn’t moving upwards in space, they would be the ones who need to bring some sort of proof.
And, by the way, this has happened in history many many times! For instance, prior to 1847, doctors didn’t practice hand hygiene…they didn’t wash their hands between patients…they didn’t think they needed to. Well, along comes a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis who said, “Hey, we should be washing our hands between patients b/c we seem to be spreading disease!” Initially, he was mocked and disbelieved. The burden of proof was on him to prove his new theory, so he ran experiments and had provable data to show that his theory was correct, and now hand hygiene is not just a part of common medical practice, but it’s a part of our general population’s culture as well.
For this fallacy, rather than a question, I’m going to give you a statement you can use when someone is committing the Burden of Proof Fallacy and it’s this: “You’re the one making the claim, you’re the one responsible to prove it.” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
