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52 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 25 number 1 2020Lists and descriptions of logical fallacies,
which exist both on and offline, are numerous. They
are in logic textbooks, on Wikipedia, have dedicated
websites (like yourlogicalfallacyis.com and logicallyfal-
lacious.com), and even dedicated books—like Bad Ar-
guments: 100 of the Most Important Fallacies in Western
Philosophy (edited by Robert Arp, Steven Barbone,
and Michael Bruce [Hoboken, NY: Wiley-Blackwell,
2018]). Our collective list of logical fallacies is the end
result of the efforts of numerous philosophers, all care-
fully thinking about the many ways that reasoning can
go wrong. Consequently, it’s difficult to discover a gen-
uinely new fallacy—to identify a common mistake in
reasoning that no one has officially identified and
named. I would like to humbly argue, however, that I
may have recently done just that.
Now, to be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that I
have invented a name for a variety of a logical fallacy
that already exists. I did that when I tried to coin the
phrase “mystery therefore magic” (in an article for
Scientia Salonon the conflict between religion and
science) to describe the mistake of concluding that
something must have a supernatural explanation if it
has yet to receive a natural one. “How did that hap-
pen? It’s a mystery! Therefore, it’s magic.” This is
simply a variety of appealing to ignorance, where one
takes a lack of proof that something is false as a rea-
son to conclude it is true. In this case, the inability to
find a natural explanation for a claim is seen to be rea-
son to conclude that it is magic. (It also invokes the
argument from personal incredulity: “If Ican’t explainit, then it must be inexplicable.”) I think it is useful to
give this particular variety of appealing to ignorance
its own name; this particular mistake is very common
and “mystery therefore magic” is easy for students to
understand and remember. But in doing so, I did not
identify a newfallacy.
But I do believe I did so when, in the aforemen-
tioned Bad Argumentsbook (pp. 140-144), I identi-
fied and described a fallacy I called the “Countless
Counterfeits” fallacy. I was inspired by an encounter
with a former colleague of mine with whom I was
discussing the existence of UFOs. As I recall the con-
versation, he mentioned a couple of stories that he
thought were remarkable, but which I knew had been
debunked. “Roswell was Project Mogul,” I said. “The
Phoenix Lights were flares.” His reply (again, as I re-
call) was made as he held a book of close encountershe
had bought at a library’s used book sale we were both
attending. “Ok, but there are so many other UFO sto-
ries out there; they can’t all be false. And if just one of
them is legit, aliens exist.” I was taken aback. I knew
something was wrong with his argument. Indeed,
there had to be. After all, I could say the same thing
about the number of ghost, Bigfoot, and Nessie sight-
ings—and I knew he didn’t believe in any of that. But
still, I couldn’t identify exactly what the mistake was.
One might be tempted to think the error is
akin to stacking up anecdotes, and I could have just
said “the plural of anecdote is not data.” But this does-
n’t seem to be the mistake. He’s not thinking that a
bunch of debunked UFO stories can be combinedtoCountless Counterfeits
A New Logical Fallacy?
BY D AVID KYLE JO H N SO N