Poisoning the well
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poisoning the well is a logical fallacy where adverse information about someone is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that person is about to say. Poisoning the well is a special case of argumentum ad hominem. The term was first used with this sense [1] by John Henry Newman in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua [2].
This "argument" has the following form:
- 1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented.
- 2. Therefore any claims person A makes will be false.
Examples:
- Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail.
- Don't listen to what he says, he's a lawyer.
- This is an argument between science and religion.
In general usage, poisoning the well is the provision of any information that may produce a biased result. For example, if a woman tells her friend "I think I might buy this beautiful dress." then asks how it looks, she has "poisoned the well", as her previous comment could affect her friend's response.
Similarly, in written work, an inappropriate heading to a section or chapter can create pre-bias. As an example:
- The so-called "Theory" of Relativity
- We now examine the theory of relativity...
which has already "poisoned the well" to a balanced argument.
[edit] Historical pretext for persecutions and pogroms
Apart from the above, there were two historical occasions when an ethnic or religious minority was accused of having actually and concretely poisoned the water wells in the country where it resided. Such accusations were made against Jews in various European countries following the Black Death plague (1348-1350), and against Koreans living in Japan in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.
In both cases the accusation was never substantiated, but did lead to widescale persecution and pogroms against the group so accused.
