Gish Gallop
| Summary | |
|---|---|
| Issue | The public perceives the person who made a point that their opponent could not disprove, a winner of the debate. |
| Exploit | Make many low-effort false points that require high effort to disprove to make your opponent run out of time. |
| Exploit example | This article on City Journal exploits Gish Gallop to “prove” people should not wear surgery masks during a pandemic. Numerous factual mistakes, rhetoric tricks, and misuse of statistics will take a lot of time to refute. |
| Defence | Call out the Gish Gallop. Do not spread your attention, attack the weakest point only. |
Dr. Duane Gish, a creationist scientist, participated in over 300 debates against evolutionists in his life. For his debate style he was known as creation’s bulldog, but we remember him for a debate technique named in his honour.
Gish gallop, or a Shotgun argument is a technique in which a debater presents numerous arguments in attempt to overwhelm the opponent and make it impossible to refute every argument. The opponent may lack the knowledge in some areas where an argument is made, lack facts or evidence to disprove an argument, or just simply forget to address all of them.
The term Gish gallop was created by Dr. Eugenie Scott who suggested choosing debate formats that help avoid “Gish gallop” in presentations.
Gish gallop in practice #
Alice: Look, the data on climate change is far from settled. Firstly, there are natural climate cycles that have been happening for millions of years. The Earth has warmed and cooled before humans even existed. Plus, there’s no consensus among scientists – didn’t you know that thousands of scientists disagree with the mainstream view? Also, climate models have been wrong before; remember when they said we’d be in a new ice age by now? And what about the fact that volcanic eruptions release way more CO2 than human activity ever could? Don’t forget, solar activity plays a huge role too – more than anyone wants to admit. Also, there are studies showing that the temperature data has been manipulated! And why aren’t we talking about how beneficial a little warming could be, like longer growing seasons and more habitable land in colder regions? Oh, and what about all those climate treaties that have been broken? They clearly don’t work, so why should we trust governments on this?
Bob: Okay, hold on a second. There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s take this one point at a time. First, the scientific consensus –"
Alice: But consensus doesn’t mean truth! Remember when there was a consensus that the Earth was the centre of the universe? Consensus can be wrong, just like how climate models have been proven wrong. And if scientists were so sure, why do we keep seeing conflicting studies?
Note that using Gish gallop does not make the point automatically wrong (see also Horns effect). ■