Fallacies of Defective Induction

Meet one over-charging lawyer and conclude all lawyers overcharge — that is reasoning from a sample too small to support the claim. Now flip it: hear that an entire class is talkative and assume any one student in it must be too — the same size problem, running the opposite direction. This topic is about arguments that stretch too little evidence into too large a conclusion, either way.

In two minutes

A fallacy of defective induction draws a conclusion that goes beyond what the evidence can actually support — usually by generalising too fast, or by wrongly moving a quality between a whole and its parts.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Logic – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.