Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy

By Yiler Huang

The Appeal to Ignorance fallacy describes the situation in which a person argues that something is true, only because it is not, or can not be, proven as false yet. Here are three examples: Werewolf, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster. These are all “fantastical” creatures that may or may not exist. People who believe in them would often tell you they are real, because no one has proven that they are fake. It is often hard to argue with believers of these creatures, as it is way harder to prove that something doesn’t exist than to prove that something exists.

Another two examples are observed from my parents. My mother has been buying a multi-level-marketing salt water for a long while at a rather unreasonable price. She believed that it cures everything, and it was hard for me to convince her otherwise because I had to find evidences of it not working, where as my mom could just say it works because she's used it and knew it already. The other one is what I observed from my father. He used to go to this “quantum taichi” treatment place, he says it was held by a former principal of National Taiwan University, and says it cures a lot of different diseases. Similar to the last example, it was really hard to prove that it doesn’t work, but this doesn’t mean it works.

This fallacy is often used to manipulate people. From the two examples I provided, we can see that people would make others use or purchase certain products or services that might be total scams, but they can say that it works because no one can prove that they don’t.