Question

...
Jason Mathias

What fallacy is this?

P1: Remdesivir is bad.

P2: Remdesivir is the main drug used to kill hundreds of thousands of hospitalized patients who had Covid-19. 

P3: Remdesivir was used in a study in Africa for Ebola in 2018 and 53% of the recipients died from It.

 

Now, we know Ebola has a death rate of 50%. And in the trials with treating Ebola patients with Remdesivir the death rate was around 50%. Yet, this person claims the drug killed the people and not the Ebola. What fallacy is that? 

asked on Sunday, Feb 06, 2022 06:04:20 PM by Jason Mathias

Top Categories Suggested by Community

Comments

Want to get notified of all questions as they are asked? Update your mail preferences and turn on "Instant Notification."

Bo's Book Bundle

Get all EIGHT of Bo's printed books, all autographed*. Save over $50!

* This offer is for residents of United States and Canada only.

Get the Book Bundle

Answers

...
TrappedPrior (RotE)
2

Looks like a bunch of false premises (P2, P3) and one opinion (P1 - also counts as a dubious premise, since it's unsupported yet included as part of an argument).

answered on Sunday, Feb 06, 2022 07:07:00 PM by TrappedPrior (RotE)

TrappedPrior (RotE) Suggested These Categories

Comments

...
1
Jason Mathias writes:

Thank you. Could it possibly be a non sequitur to assume the 53% of deaths were all caused by the drug treating the Ebola instead of the Ebola that also has a 50% death rate?

posted on Sunday, Feb 06, 2022 07:15:58 PM
...
0
TrappedPrior (RotE) writes:
[To Jason Mathias ]

P1) Ebola has a fatality rate of 50%

P2) After treating patients with Remdesivir, it was observed that 53% of these patients died

C) Therefore, Remdesivir is responsible for those deaths.

This is a non sequitur, yes. Just because ~53% of Ebola patients treated with Remdesivir died, does not mean the drug itself killed them - that would be a causal conclusion without causal evidence.

[ login to reply ] posted on Monday, Feb 07, 2022 09:51:04 AM
...
skips777
0

Were the p's said by the coroner who autopsied the dead patients? If so, the premises are true and just statements of fact. If not, then it's someone speaking an unsupported opinion.

P1 could be "poisoning the well" fallacy maybe

answered on Monday, Feb 07, 2022 07:14:00 AM by skips777

skips777 Suggested These Categories

Comments

...
0
account no longer exists writes:

Whether you call it poisoning the well I would say that is an argument from fallacy , this doesn't matter anyway this isn't the most important premise anyway and you may be committing the selective attention 

posted on Monday, Feb 07, 2022 04:58:57 PM
...
Arlo
0

The largest issues I see are not logical errors.  Rather, the biggest issues I see are two misunderstandings: (i) causality and how to demonstrate it, along with (ii) statistics and margins of error.

From the point of view of logic:

I'm not sure if P1 is intended as a conclusion (because of the claims in P2 and P3) or if P1 is simply an appeal to emotion that attempts to set those hearing the argument against Remdesivir before the argument actually begins.  Regardless using a broad, undefined, and subjective term like "bad" without defining what constitutes "badness" makes it impossible to counter the claim or to see how it applies in this situation.

Similarly, the imprecise language of P3 can lead to at least two understandings of the sentence.  The lack of clarity around the antecedent of the pronoun "it" at the end of P3 mean that P3 can be taken at least two ways (either intentionally or accidentally).  If one assumes "it" refers to the subject of the sentence, Remdesivir would become the stated cause of the deaths; if one understood "it" to refer to the object, then Ebola wold be the cause of death.  At best, an unfortunate lack of clarity; at worst, perhaps an attempt to deceive. 

Linking nothing more than the administration of a treatment with patient deaths is also an example of causal reductionism .

Mostly, it seems to be a series of opinions, not supported by logic or sufficient detail or context to be considered fact.

 

answered on Monday, Feb 07, 2022 10:40:33 AM by Arlo

Arlo Suggested These Categories

Comments