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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Friday, February 3, 2012

Logical Fallacy of the Week; Week 22. Argumentum Verbosium

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Argumentum verbosium – Also know as proof by verbosity.

Proof by intimidation (or Argumentum Verbosium) is a jocular term used mainly in mathematics to refer to a style of presenting a purported mathematical proof by giving an argument loaded with jargon and appeal to obscure results, so that the audience is simply obliged to accept it, lest they have to admit their ignorance and lack of understanding. 

The term is also used when the author is an authority in his field presenting his proof to people who respect a priori his insistence that the proof is valid or when the author claims that his statement is true because it is trivial or because he simply says so. Usage of this term is for the most part in good humour, though it also appears in serious criticism. 

More generally, "proof by intimidation" has also been used by critics of junk science to describe cases in which scientific evidence is thrown aside in favour of a litany of tragic individual cases presented to the public by articulate advocates who pose as experts in their field.

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