Red Herring Fallacy, Explained

The red herring fallacy, one of the many logical fallacies you might encounter in essays, speeches, opinion pieces, and casual conversations, is an attempt to reroute a discussion from its original topic and focus on something unrelated. Once you know how to recognize them, you can remove them before they undermine your arguments.

The Red Herring Fallacy

A red herring is a misleading statement, question, or argument meant to redirect a conversation away from its original topic

For a long time, the common explanation for this phrase was that a cured herring was used to train hunting dogs to follow scent paths
However, etymologists Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross published their research that showed that the earliest references to the phrase came from a historical method for training horses, not dogs, to be comfortable with the chaos and competing smells that follow a hunting party

Purpose of a red herring

Distracts the reader or listener from the actual issue being discussed in a conversation or piece of writing

Logical fallacies can be broadly divided into two categories: formal and informal
Formal fallacies: statements that are flawed because the structure of the statement itself is flawed
Informal Fallacies: false statements that lack a logically grounded premise
Fallacies of relevance: claims or statements that’s irrelevant to the topic being discussed

When do people use red herrings?

Debates

Conversations
Storytelling
Sometimes speakers and writers make red herring statements inadvertently
They genuinely think the statement they’re making is relevant to the discussion or because they aren’t thinking critically about the statements they are making

Red herrings in debate

Participants might use a red herring to avoid discussing a topic for which they don’t have a well-developed position

This could make them look bad in the eyes of the audience and media
Example: Moderator: Candidate, how do you plan to combat corruption in city government?
Participant: I have a multistep plan for combating corruption, and I also have a ten-point plan for reducing emissions

What are some examples of a red herring?

Avoiding the issue: moves an argument away from its original topic by introducing an irrelevant statement

Whataboutism: turns the argument’s focus to another party’s faults to deflect criticism from the original party being discussed
Example: “Our new boss doesn’t schedule enough staff on Fridays.”