List of fallacies (deception)

List of fallacies

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For specific popular misconceptions, see List of common misconceptions.

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This is a list of fallacies in logic and rhetoric.

Contents [show] 1 Formal fallacies 1.1 Propositional fallacies 1.2 Quantificational fallacies 1.3 Formal syllogistic fallacies 2 Informal fallacies 2.1 Faulty generalizations 2.2 Red herring fallacies 3 Conditional or questionable fallacies 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Formal fallacies

Formal fallacies are arguments that are fallacious due to an error in their form or technical structure.^[1] All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequiturs.

• Appeal to law: an argument which implies that legislation is a moral imperative.
• Appeal to probability: assumes that because something could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen. This is the premise on which Murphy's Law is based.
• Argument from fallacy: assumes that if an argument for some conclusion is fallacious, then the conclusion is false.
• Base rate fallacy: using weak evidence to make a probability judgment without taking into account known empirical statistics about the probability.
• Conjunction fallacy: assumption that an outcome simultaneously satisfying multiple conditions is more probable than an outcome satisfying a single one of them.
• Correlative based fallacies
  • Denying the correlative: where attempts are made at introducing alternatives where there are none.
  • Suppressed correlative: where a correlative is redefined so that one alternative is made impossible.
• Fallacy of necessity: a degree of unwarranted necessity is placed in the conclusion based on the necessity of one or more of its premises.
• False dilemma (false dichotomy): where two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are more.
• Is–ought problem: the inappropriate inference that because something is some way or other, so it ought to be that way.
• Homunculus fallacy: where a "middle-man" is used for explanation, this usually leads to regressive middle-man. Explanations without actually explaining the real nature of a function or a process. Instead, it explains the concept in terms of the concept itself, without first defining or explaining the original concept.
• Masked man fallacy: the substitution of identical designators in a true statement can lead to a false one.
• Naturalistic fallacy: a fallacy that claims that if something is natural, pleasant, popular, etc. then it is good or right.
• Nirvana fallacy: when solutions to problems are said not to be right because they are not perfect.
• Negative proof fallacy: that, because a premise cannot be proven false, the premise must be true; or that, because a premise cannot be proven true, the premise must be false.
• Package-deal fallacy: consists of assuming that things often grouped together by tradition or culture must always be grouped that way.
• Teleological Fallacy: In which a speaker claims that some object or idea has a purpose, and then claims that the existence of this purpose suggests or requires that the speaker's argument is true. The initial claim that a purpose must exist is rarely explicitly stated.
• Equivocation Fallacy: In which a speaker will use a general definition of a term to a specific insinuation.

[edit] Propositional fallacies

Propositional fallacies:

• Affirming a disjunct: concluded that one logical disjunction must be false because the other disjunct is true; A or B; A; therefore not B.
• Affirming the consequent: the antecedent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be true because the consequent is true; if A, then B; B, therefore A.
• Denying the antecedent: the consequent in an indicative conditional is claimed to be false because the antecedent is false; if A, then B; not A, therefore not B.

[edit] Quantificational fallacies

Quantificational fallacies:

• Existential fallacy: an argument has two universal premises and a particular conclusion, but the premises do not establish the truth of the conclusion.
• Proof by example: where examples are offered as inductive proof for a universal proposition. ("This apple is red, therefore all apples are red.")

[edit] Formal syllogistic fallacies

Syllogistic fallacies are logical fallacies that occur in syllogisms.

• Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise: when a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but at least one negative premise.
• Fallacy of exclusive premises: a categorical syllogism that is invalid because both of its premises are negative.
• Fallacy of four terms: a categorical syllogism has four terms.
• Illicit major: a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its major term is undistributed in the major premise but distributed in the conclusion.
• Fallacy of the undistributed middle: the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed.

[edit] Informal fallacies

Informal fallacies are arguments that are fallacious for reasons other than structural (formal) flaws.

• Argument from repetition (argumentum ad nauseam): signifies that it has been discussed extensively (possibly by different people) until nobody cares to discuss it anymore
• Appeal to ridicule: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made by presenting the opponent's argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous
• Argument from ignorance (appeal to ignorance): The fallacy of assuming that something is true/false because it has not been proven false/true. For example: "The student has failed to prove that he didn't cheat on the test, therefore he must have cheated on the test."
• Begging the question (petitio principii): where the conclusion of an argument is implicitly or explicitly assumed in one of the premises
• Circular cause and consequence: where the consequence of the phenomenon is claimed to be its root cause
• Continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard): appears to demonstrate that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states. According to the fallacy, differences in quality cannot result from differences in quantity.
• Correlation does not imply causation (cum hoc ergo propter hoc): a phrase used in the sciences and the statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not imply that one causes the other
• Square logic: A complex argument which is an iteration of non-sequitur arguments used as a premise for an unrelated conclusion
• Demanding negative proof: attempting to avoid the burden of proof for some claim by demanding proof of the contrary from whoever questions that claim
• Equivocation: the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time)
• Etymological fallacy: which reasons that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning.
• Fallacies of distribution
  • Division: where one reasons logically that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts
  • Composition: where one reasons logically that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole
  • Ecological fallacy: inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong
• If-by-whiskey: An argument that supports both sides of an issue by using terms that are selectively emotionally sensitive.
• Fallacy of many questions (complex question, fallacy of presupposition, loaded question, plurium interrogationum): someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda.
• Fallacy of the single cause ("joint effect", or "causal oversimplification"): occurs when it is assumed that there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.
• False attribution: occurs when an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument
  • contextomy (Fallacy of quoting out of context): refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning
• False compromise/middle ground: asserts that a compromise between two positions is correct
• Gambler's fallacy: the incorrect belief that the likelihood of a random event can be affected by or predicted from other, independent events
• Historian's fallacy: occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision. It is not to be confused with presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas (such as moral standards) are projected into the past.
• Incomplete comparison: where not enough information is provided to make a complete comparison
• Inconsistent comparison: where different methods of comparison are used, leaving one with a false impression of the whole comparison
• Intentional fallacy: addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance
• Moving the goalpost (raising the bar): argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded
• Perfect solution fallacy: where an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists and/or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it was implemented
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc: also known as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation.
• Proof by verbosity (argumentum verbosium) (proof by intimidation): submission of others to an argument too complex and verbose to reasonably deal with in all its intimate details. see also Gish Gallop and argument from authority.
• Prosecutor's fallacy: a low probability of false matches does not mean a low probability of some false match being found
• Psychologist's fallacy: occurs when an observer presupposes the objectivity of his own perspective when analyzing a behavioral event
• Red herring: This occurs when a speaker attempts to distract an audience by deviating from the topic at hand by introducing a separate argument which the speaker believes will be easier to speak to.
• Regression fallacy: ascribes cause where none exists. The flaw is failing to account for natural fluctuations. It is frequently a special kind of the post hoc fallacy.
• Reification (hypostatization): a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea.
• Retrospective determinism: the argument that because some event has occurred, its occurrence must have been inevitable beforehand
• Special pleading: where a proponent of a position attempts to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule or principle without justifying the exemption
• Suppressed correlative: an argument which tries to redefine a correlative (two mutually exclusive options) so that one alternative encompasses the other, thus making one alternative impossible
• Wrong direction: where cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa.

[edit] Faulty generalizations

Faulty generalizations:

• Accident (fallacy): when an exception to the generalization is ignored.
  • No True Scotsman: when a generalization is made true only when a counterexample is ruled out on shaky grounds.
• Cherry picking: act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position
• Composition: where one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some (or even every) part of the whole
• Dicto simpliciter
  • Converse accident (a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter): when an exception to a generalization is wrongly called for
• False analogy: false analogy consists of an error in the substance of an argument (the content of the analogy itself), not an error in the logical structure of the argument
• Hasty generalization (fallacy of insufficient statistics, fallacy of insufficient sample, fallacy of the lonely fact, leaping to a conclusion, hasty induction, secundum quid)
• Misleading vividness: involves describing an occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem
• Overwhelming exception (hasty generalization): It is a generalization which is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications which eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to assume
• Pathetic fallacy: when an inanimate object is declared to have characteristics of animate objects
• Spotlight fallacy: when a person uncritically assumes that all members or cases of a certain class or type are like those that receive the most attention or coverage in the media
• Thought-terminating cliché: a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance, conceal lack of thought-entertainment, move onto other topics etc. but in any case, end the debate with a cliche—not a point.

[edit] Red herring fallacies

A red herring is an argument, given in response to another argument, which does not address the original issue. See also irrelevant conclusion

• Ad hominem: attacking the person instead of the argument. A form of this is reductio ad Hitlerum.
• Argumentum ad baculum ("appeal to the stick" or "appeal to force"): where an argument is made through coercion or threats of force towards an opposing party
• Argumentum ad populum ("appeal to belief", "appeal to the majority", "appeal to the people"): where a proposition is claimed to be true solely because many people believe it to be true
• Association fallacy (guilt by association)
• Appeal to authority: where an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it
  • Appeal to accomplishment: where an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer.
• Appeal to consequences: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument concludes that a premise is either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences for a particular party
• Appeal to emotion: where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning
  • Appeal to consequences: a specific type of appeal to emotion
  • Appeal to fear: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made by increasing fear and prejudice towards the opposing side
  • Appeal to flattery: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made due to the use of flattery to gather support
  • Appeal to pity: a specific type of appeal to emotion
  • Appeal to ridicule: a specific type of appeal to emotion
  • Appeal to spite: a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made through exploiting people's bitterness or spite towards an opposing party
  • Wishful thinking: a specific type of appeal to emotion where a decision is made according to what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than according to evidence or reason
• Appeal to motive: where a premise is dismissed, by calling into question the motives of its proposer
• Appeal to nature: an argument wherein something is deemed correct or good if it is natural, and is deemed incorrect or bad if it is unnatural
• Appeal to novelty: where a proposal is claimed to be superior or better solely because it is new or modern
• Appeal to poverty (argumentum ad lazarum): thinking the conclusion is affected by a party's financial situation.
• Appeal to wealth (argumentum ad crumenam): concluding that a statement's truth value is affected by a party's financial situation. Very similar to Agrumentum ad lazarum. The terms ad lazarum and ad crumenam can be interchangeable.
• Argument from silence (argumentum ex silentio): a conclusion based on silence or lack of contrary evidence
• Appeal to tradition: where a thesis is deemed correct on the basis that it has a long-standing tradition behind it
• Chronological snobbery: where a thesis is deemed incorrect because it was commonly held when something else, clearly false, was also commonly held
• Genetic fallacy: where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.
• Judgmental language: insulting or pejorative language to influence the recipient's judgment
• Poisoning the well: where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say
• Sentimental fallacy: it would be more pleasant if; therefore it ought to be; therefore it is
• Straw man argument: based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position
  • Perverted analogy: twisting an opponents analogy to mean something broader than intended
  • False surrender (or agree to disagree): offering truce or falsely surrendering the position in order to misrepresent opponent's position as unprovable or ad nauseam while ignoring Aumann's agreement theorem
• Style over substance fallacy: occurs when one emphasizes the way in which the argument is presented, while marginalizing (or outright ignoring) the content of the argument
• Texas sharpshooter fallacy: Picking your target after you shoot the dart ensuring that you are right
• Two wrongs make a right: occurs when it is assumed that if one wrong is committed, another wrong will cancel it out
• Tu quoque: the argument states that a certain position is false or wrong and/or should be disregarded because its proponent fails to act consistently in accordance with that position

[edit] Conditional or questionable fallacies

• Definist fallacy: involves the confusion between two notions by defining one in terms of the other
• Luddite fallacy: related to the belief that labour-saving technologies increase unemployment by reducing demand for labour
• Broken window fallacy: an argument which disregards lost opportunity costs (typically non-obvious, difficult to determine or otherwise hidden) associated with destroying property of others, or other ways of externalizing costs onto others.
• Slippery slope: argument states that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact

[edit] See also

Logic portal

• List of common misconceptions
• List of cognitive biases
• List of memory biases
• List of misquotations
• List of topics related to public relations and propaganda
• Straight and Crooked Thinking (book

False flag

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"False colors" redirects here. For the imaging technique, see False-color.

False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time.

Contents [show] 1 Naval warfare 2 Air warfare 3 Land warfare 4 As pretexts for war 5 Pseudo-operations 6 Espionage 7 Civilian usage 7.1 Businesses 7.2 Political campaigning 7.3 Ideological 8 Terrorism 9 Dirty War 10 See also 11 Notes

[edit] Naval warfare

This practice was considered acceptable in naval warfare, provided the false flag was lowered and the national flag raised before engaging in battle. Auxiliary cruisers operated in such a fashion in both World Wars, as did Q-ships, while merchant vessels were encouraged to use false flags for protection. One of the most notable examples was in World War II when the German commerce raider Kormoran, disguised as a Dutch merchant ship, surprised and sank the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney in 1941, causing the greatest recorded loss of life on an Australian warship. The Kormoran was also fatally crippled in that encounter and its crew was captured, but it was a considerable psychological victory for the Germans.^[1]
The British used a Kriegsmarine Ensign in the St Nazaire Raid and captured a German Morse code book. The old destroyer Campbeltown, which the British planned to sacrifice in the operation, was provided with cosmetic modifications, cutting the ship's funnels and chamfering the edges to resemble a German Möwe-class destroyer. The British were able to get within two miles of the harbour before the defences responded, where the explosive-rigged Campbeltown and commandos successfully disabled or destroyed the key dock structures of the port.^[2][3]

[edit] Air warfare

“	It was obvious that if the case were to be kept going a faked act of sabotage would have to be committed	”
— MI5 file on Mutt and Jeff[4]

In December 1922-February 1923, Rules concerning the Control of Wireless Telegraphy in Time of War and Air Warfare, drafted by a commission of jurists at the Hague regulates:
Art. 3. A military aircraft must carry an exterior mark indicating its nationality and its military character.
Art. 19. The use of false exterior marks is forbidden.
British intelligence officials in World War II allowed double agents to fire-bomb a power station and a food dump in the UK to protect their cover, according to declassified documents. The documents stated the agents took precautions to ensure they did not cause serious damage. One of the documents released also stated: "It should be recognised that friends as well as enemies must be completely deceived."^[4]

[edit] Land warfare

In land warfare, the use of a false flag is similar to that of naval warfare. The most widespread assumption is that this practice was first established under international humanitarian law at the trial in 1947 of the planner and commander of Operation Greif, Otto Skorzeny, by the military court at the Dachau Trials. In this trial, the court did not find Skorzeny guilty of a crime by ordering his men into action in American uniforms. He had passed on to his men the warning of German legal experts, that if they fought in American uniforms, they would be breaking the laws of war, but they probably were not doing so just by wearing the uniform. During the trial, a number of arguments were advanced to substantiate this position and the German and U.S. military seem to have been in agreement on it. In the transcript of the trial^[5] it is mentioned that Paragraph 43 of the Field Manual published by the War Department, United States Army, on October 1, 1940, under the title "Rules of Land Warfare", says:

"National flags, insignias and uniforms as a ruse - in practice it has been authorized to make use of these as a ruse. The foregoing rule (Article 23 of the Annex of the IVth Hague Convention), does not prohibit such use, but does prohibit their improper use. It is certainly forbidden to make use of them during a combat. Before opening fire upon the enemy, they must be discarded".

Also The American Soldiers' Handbook, was quoted by Defense Counsel and says:

"The use of the enemy flag, insignia, and uniform is permitted under some circumstances. They are not to be used during actual fighting, and if used in order to approach the enemy without drawing fire, should be thrown away or removed as soon as fighting begins".

The outcome of the trial has been codified in the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Protocol I):
Article 37.-Prohibition of perfidy

1. It is prohibited to kill, injure, or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:

(a) The feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;

(b) The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;

(c) The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and

(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.

2. Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

Article 38.-Recognized emblems

1. It is prohibited to make improper use of the distinctive emblem of the red cross, red crescent or red lion and sun or of other emblems, signs or signals provided for by the Conventions or by this Protocol. It is also prohibited to misuse deliberately in an armed conflict other internationally recognized protective emblems, signs or signals, including the flag of truce, and the protective emblem of cultural property.

2. It is prohibited to make use of the distinctive emblem of the United Nations, except as authorized by that Organization.

Article 39.-Emblems of nationality

1. It is prohibited to make use in an armed conflict of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.

2. It is prohibited to make use of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of adverse Parties while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations.

3. Nothing in this Article or in Article 37, paragraph 1 ( d ), shall affect the existing generally recognized rules of international law applicable to espionage or to the use of flags in the conduct of armed conflict at sea.

[edit] As pretexts for war

In the 1931 Mukden incident, Japanese officers fabricated a pretext for annexing Manchuria by blowing up a section of railway. Six years later they falsely claimed the kidnapping of one of their soldiers in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident as an excuse to invade China proper.
In the Gleiwitz incident in August 1939, Reinhard Heydrich made use of fabricated evidence of a Polish attack against Germany to mobilize German public opinion and to fabricate a false justification for a war with Poland. This, along with other false flag operations in Operation Himmler, would be used to mobilize support from the German population for the start of World War II in Europe.
On November 26, 1939, the Soviet Union shelled the Russian village of Mainila near the Finnish border. The Soviet Union attacked Finland four days afterwards, claiming the shelling to have been a Finnish military action. Russia subsequently agreed that the attack was initiated by the Soviets.^[6] Also, the nearest Finnish artillery pieces were well out of range of Mainila.^[7]
In 1953, the U.S. and British-orchestrated Operation Ajax used "false-flag" and propaganda operations against the formerly democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. Information regarding the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat has been largely declassified and is available in the CIA archives.^[8]
In 1954, the Military Intelligence Directorate of Israel launched a series of bombings against targets in Cairo which had British and American financial interests, in the hopes of alienating the U.S. and Britain from Egypt.^[9] Codenamed Operation Suzannah, it was later dubbed the Lavon Affair, after Israeli Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon. Lavon and Israeli Military Intelligence head Binyamin Gibli had planned and carried out the operation in secret, and without telling Prime Minister Moshe Sharett in advance. Lavon and Gibli both lost their jobs as a result. Israel (where it is known as "The Unfortunate Affair") finally admitted responsibility in 2005.^[10]
The planned, but never executed, 1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking or shooting down passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs. These actions would be blamed on Cuba, and would be a pretext for an invasion of Cuba and the overthrow of Fidel Castro's communist government. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nixed by John F. Kennedy, came to light through the Freedom of Information Act and was publicized by James Bamford.
Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin,^[11] former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko^[12] and others have stated that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings that precipitated the Second Chechen War were false flag operations perpetrated by the FSB. Galkin has since recanted his accusation, which was made while prisoner of Chechen rebels.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Pseudo-operations

Pseudo-operations are those in which forces of one power disguise themselves as enemy forces. For example, a state power may disguise teams of operatives as insurgents and, with the aid of defectors, infiltrate insurgent areas.^[13] The aim of such pseudo-operations may be to gather short or long-term intelligence or to engage in active operations, in particular assassinations of important enemies. However, they usually involve both, as the risks of exposure rapidly increase with time and intelligence gathering eventually leads to violent confrontation. Pseudo-operations may be directed by military or police forces, or both. Police forces are usually best suited to intelligence tasks; however, military provide the structure needed to back up such pseudo-ops with military response forces. According to US military expert Lawrence Cline (2005), "the teams typically have been controlled by police services, but this largely was due to the weaknesses in the respective military intelligence systems."
The State Political Directorate (OGPU) of the Soviet Union set up such an operation from 1921 to 1926. During Operation Trust, they used loose networks of White Army supporters and extended them, creating the pseudo-"Monarchist Union of Central Russia" (MUCR) in order to help the OGPU identify real monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks. An example of a successful assassination was United States Marine Sergeant Herman H. Hanneken leading a patrol of his Haitian Gendarmerie disguised as enemy guerrillas in 1919. The Patrol successfully passed several enemy checkpoints in order to assassinate the guerilla leader Charlemagne Péralte near Grand-Rivière du Nord. Hanneken was awarded the Medal of Honor and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant for his deed.
During the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s, captured Mau Mau members who switched sides and specially trained British troops initiated the pseudo-gang concept to successfully counter Mau Mau terrorists. In 1960 Frank Kitson, (who was later involved in the Northern Irish conflict and is now a retired British General), published Gangs and Counter-gangs, an account of his experiences with the technique in Kenya; information included how to counter gangs and measures of deception, including the use of defectors, which brought the issue a wider audience.
Another example of combined police and military oversight of pseudo-operations include the Selous Scouts in former country Rhodesia (current Zimbabwe), governed by white minority rule until 1980. The Selous Scouts were formed at the beginning of Operation Hurricane, in November 1973, by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Ronald Reid-Daly. As all Special Forces in Rhodesia, by 1977 they were controlled by COMOPS (Commander, Combined Operations) Commander Lieutenant General Peter Walls. The Selous Scouts were originally composed of 120 members, with all officers being white and the highest rank initially available for Africans being colour sergeant. They succeeded in turning approximately 800 insurgents who were then paid by Special Branch, ultimately reaching the number of 1,500 members. Engaging mainly in long-range reconnaissance and surveillance missions, they increasingly turned to offensive actions, including the attempted assassination of ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo in Zambia. This mission was finally aborted by the Selous Scouts, and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service.^[14]
Some offensive operations attracted international condemnation, in particular the Selous Scouts' raid on a ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) camp at Nyadzonya Pungwe, Mozambique in August 1976. ZANLA was then led by Josiah Tongogara. Using Rhodesian trucks and armored cars disguised as Mozambique military vehicles, 84 scouts killed 1,284 terrorists in the camp, the camp was registered as a refugee camp by the United Nations (UN). Even according to Reid-Daly, most of those killed were unarmed guerrillas standing in formation for a parade. The camp hospital was also set ablaze by the rounds fired by the Scouts, killing all patients.^[15] According to David Martin and Phyllis Johnson, who visited the camp shortly before the raid, it was only a refugee camp which did not host any guerrillas. Which was staged for UN approval.^[16]
According to a 1978 study by the Directorate of Military Intelligence, 68% of all insurgent deaths inside Rhodesia could be attributed to the Selous Scouts, who were disbanded in 1980.^[17]
If the action is a police action, then these tactics would fall within the laws of the state initiating the pseudo, but if such actions are taken in a civil war or during a belligerent military occupation then those who participate in such actions would not be privileged belligerents. The principle of plausible deniability is usually applied for pseudo-teams. (See the above section Laws of war). Some false flag operations have been described by Lawrence E. Cline, a retired US Army intelligence officer, as pseudo-operations, or "the use of organized teams which are disguised as guerrilla groups for long- or short-term penetration of insurgent-controlled areas."
Pseudo Operations should be distinguished, notes Cline, from the more common police or intelligence infiltration of guerrilla or criminal organizations. In the latter case, infiltration is normally done by individuals. Pseudo teams, on the other hand, are formed as needed from organized units, usually military or paramilitary. The use of pseudo teams has been a hallmark of a number of foreign counterinsurgency campaigns."^[13]

[edit] Espionage

See false flag penetrator.

In espionage the term "false flag" describes the recruiting of agents by operatives posing as representatives of a cause the prospective agents are sympathetic to, or even the agents' own government. For example, during the Cold War, several female West German civil servants were tricked into stealing classified documents by agents of the East German Stasi intelligence service, pretending to be members of West German peace advocacy groups (the Stasi agents were also described as "Romeos," indicating that they also used their sex appeal to manipulate their targets, making this operation a combination of the false flag and "honey trap" techniques).^[18]
The technique can also be used to expose enemy agents in one's own service, by having someone approach the suspect and pose as an agent of the enemy. Earl Edwin Pitts, a 13-year veteran of the FBI and an attorney, was caught when he was approached by FBI agents posing as Russian agents.
Frederick Forsyth described the technique in his novel The Fourth Protocol, in which a fiercely anti-communist British civil servant passes military secrets to a South African diplomat who is in fact a Russian agent.
"False Flag" is also the title of a first season episode of the TV series Burn Notice. In that episode, a female assassin (Lucy Lawless) tricks Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) into leading her to her target, by posing as the man's innocent and abused ex-wife, trying to reclaim her kidnapped son.

[edit] Civilian usage

While false flag operations originate in warfare and government, they also can occur in civilian settings among certain factions, such as businesses, special interest groups, religions, political ideologies and campaigns for office.

[edit] Businesses

In business and marketing, similar operations are being employed in some public relations campaigns (see Astroturfing). Telemarketing firms practice false flag type behavior when they pretend to be a market research firm (referred to as "sugging"). In some rare cases, members of an unsuccessful business will destroy some of their own property to conceal an unrelated crime (e.g. safety violations, embezzlement, etc.) but make it appear as though the destruction was done by a rival company.

[edit] Political campaigning

Political campaigning has a long history of this tactic in various forms, including in person, print media and electronically in recent years. This can involve when supporters of one candidate pose as supporters of another, or act as “straw men” for their preferred candidate to debate against. This can happen with or without the candidate's knowledge. The Canuck letter is an example of one candidate creating a false document and attributing it as coming from another candidate in order to discredit that candidate.
In 2006, individuals practicing false flag behavior were discovered and "outed" in New Hampshire^[19][20] and New Jersey^[21] after blog comments claiming to be from supporters of a political candidate were traced to the IP address of paid staffers for that candidate's opponent.

[edit] Ideological

Political or religious ideologies will sometimes use false flag tactics. This can be done to discredit or implicate rival groups, create the appearance of enemies when none exist, or create the illusion of organized and directed opposition when in truth, the ideology is simply unpopular with society.

A bomb threat forged by Scientology operatives

In retaliation for writing The Scandal of Scientology, the Church of Scientology stole stationery from author Paulette Cooper's home and then used that stationery to forge bomb threats and have them mailed to a Scientology office. The Guardian's Office also had a plan for further operations to discredit Cooper known as Operation Freakout, but several Scientology operatives were arrested in a separate investigation and the plan failed.^[22]

[edit] Terrorism

False flag tactics were also employed during the Algerian civil war, starting in the mid-1994. Death squads composed of DRS (Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité) security forces disguised themselves as Islamist terrorists and committed false flag terror attacks. Such groups included the OJAL (Organisation of Young Free Algerians) or the OSSRA (Secret Organisation for the safeguard of the Algerian Republic)^[23] According to Roger Faligot and Pascal Kropp (1999), the OJAL reminded of "the Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists created in December 1956 by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (Territorial Surveillance Directorate) whose mission was to carry out terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise." ^[24]
On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. At the urging of Hitler, Hindenburg responded the next day by issuing an emergency decree "for the Protection of the people and the State," which stated: "Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed." The question of who actually started the Reichstag fire is still unknown and occasionally debated.
The Russian apartment bombings in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 which killed nearly 300 people, is described by Yury Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, David Satter, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir Pribylovsky, Anna Politkovskaya, filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, as well as the secessionist Chechen authorities and former popular Russian politician Alexander Lebed as a false flag attack coordinated by the Federal Security Service, the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation.^{[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]}

[edit] Dirty War

Main article: Dirty War

During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by documents declassified by the CIA in 2000, former CIA and DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of CORU, an anti-Castro organization, had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping, in Buenos Aires, of a president of a Dutch bank. The abduction, organized by civilian SIDE agents, the Argentine intelligence agency, was to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided six thousand dollars from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of "Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim credit for the kidnapping of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba in relation with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents, which had as their aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much, and the kidnapping ultimately was not carried out.[36

Deception

For other uses of "deception" and "deceit," see Deception (disambiguation) and Deceit (disambiguation). For other uses of "mystification" and "mystify," see Mystify (disambiguation)

Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth (as in half-truths or omission). Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment. There is also self-deception.

Deception is a major relational transgression that often leads to feelings of betrayal and distrust between relational partners. Deception violates relational rules and is considered to be a negative violation of expectations. Most people expect friends, relational partners, and even strangers to be truthful most of the time. If people expected most conversations to be untruthful, talking and communicating with others would require distraction and misdirection to acquire reliable information. On a given day, it is likely that most human beings will either deceive or be deceived by another person. A significant amount of deception occurs between romantic and relational partners.^[1]

Contents [show] 1 Types 2 Motives 3 Detection 3.1 Truth bias 4 Camouflage 5 Disguise appearance 5.1 Dazzle 6 Simulation 6.1 Mimicry 6.2 Fabrication 6.3 Distraction 7 In social research 8 In psychological research 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 Further reading

[edit] Types

Deception includes several types of communications or omissions that serve to distort or omit the complete truth. Deception itself is intentionally managing verbal and/or nonverbal messages so that the message receiver will believe in a way that the message sender knows is false. Intent is critical with regard to deception. Intent differentiates between deception and an honest mistake. The Interpersonal Deception Theory explores the interrelation between communicative context and sender and receiver cognitions and behaviors in deceptive exchanges.

The five primary forms of deception are:

1. lies: making up information or giving information that is the opposite or very different from the truth.
2. equivocations: making an indirect, ambiguous, or contradictory statement.
3. concealments: omitting information that is important or relevant to the given context, or engaging in behavior that helps hide relevant information.
4. exaggeration: overstatement or stretching the truth to a degree.
5. understatement: minimization or downplaying aspects of the truth.^[1]

[edit] Motives

There are three primary motivations for deceptions in close relationships.

• Partner-focused motives: using deception to avoid hurting the partner, helping the partner to enhance or maintain his/her self-esteem, avoid worrying the partner, and protecting the partner's relationship with a third party. Partner-motivated deception can sometimes be viewed as socially polite and relationally beneficial.
• Self-focused motives: using deception to enhance or protect their self-image, wanting to shield themselves from anger, embarrassment, or criticism. Self-focused deception is generally perceived as a more serious transgression than partner-focused deception because the deceiver is acting for self reasons than for the good of the relationship.
• Relationship-focused motives: using deception to limit relationship harm by avoiding conflict or relational trauma. Relationally motivated deception can be beneficial to a relationship, and other times it can be harmful by further complicating matters.^[1]

[edit] Detection

Deception detection between relational partners is extremely difficult, unless a partner tells a blatant or obvious lie or contradicts something the other partner knows to be true. While it is difficult to deceive a partner over a long period of time, deception often occurs in day-to-day conversations between relational partners.^[1] Detecting deception is difficult because there are no known completely reliable indicators of deception. Deception, however, places a significant cognitive load on the deceiver. He or she must recall previous statements so that his or her story remains consistent and believable. As a result, deceivers often leak important information both verbally and nonverbally.

Deception and its detection is a complex, fluid, and cognitive process that is based on the context of the message exchange. The Interpersonal Deception Theory posits that interpersonal deception is a dynamic, iterative process of mutual influence between a sender, who manipulates information to depart from the truth, and a receiver, who attempts to establish the validity of the message.^[2] A deceiver's actions are interrelated to the message receiver's actions. It is during this exchange that the deceiver will reveal verbal and nonverbal information about deceit.^[3] Some research has found that there are some cues that may be correlated with deceptive communication, but scholars frequently disagree about the effectiveness of many of these cues to serve as reliable indicators. Noted deception scholar Aldert Vrij even states that is no nonverbal behavior that is uniquely associated with deception.^[4] As previously stated, a specific behavioral indicator of deception does not exist. There are, however, some nonverbal behaviors that have been found to be correlated with deception. Vrij found that examining a "cluster" of these cues was a significantly more reliable indicator of deception than examining a single cue.^[4]

In terms of perceptions about the significance of deceiving a partner, women and men typically differ in their beliefs about deception. Women view deception as a much more profound relational transgression than men. Additionally, women rate lying in general as a less acceptable behavior than men. Finally, women are much more likely to view any act of lying as significant (regardless of the subject matter) and more likely to report negative emotional reactions to lying.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Truth bias

The truth bias significantly impairs the ability of relational partners to detect deception. In term of deception, a truth bias reflects a tendency to judge more messages as truths than lies, independent of their actual veracity.^[5] When judging message veracity, the truth bias contributes to an overestimate of the actual number of truths relative to the base rate of actual truths. The truth bias is especially strong within close relationships. People are highly inclined to trust the communications of others and are unlikely to question the relational partner unless faced with a major deviation of behavior that forces a reevaluation. When attempting to detect deceit from a familiar person or relational partner, a large amount of information about the partner is brought to mind. This information essentially overwhelms the receiver's cognitive ability to detect and process any cues to deception. It is somewhat easier to detect deception in strangers, when less information about that person is brought to mind.^[6]

[edit] Camouflage

See also: Theory of camouflage

This wallaby has adaptive colouration which allows it to blend with its environment

The camouflage of a physical object often works by breaking up the visual boundary of that object. This usually involves colouring the camouflaged object with the same colours as the background against which the object will be hidden. In the realm of deceptive half-truths camouflage is realized by 'hiding' some of the truths.

Example:

• Camouflage as a form of visual deception is an essential part of military deception.

[edit] Disguise appearance

Main article: Disguise

A disguise is an appearance to create the impression of being somebody or something else; for a well-known person this is also called incognito.

Example:

• The fictional Sherlock Holmes often disguised himself as somebody else to avoid being recognized.

In a more abstract sense, 'disguise' may refer to the act of disguising the nature of a particular proposal in order to hide an unpopular motivation or effect associated with that proposal. This is a form of political spin or propaganda. See also: rationalisation and transfer within the techniques of propaganda generation.

Example:

• Depicting an act of war as a "peace" mission.

[edit] Dazzle

Example:

• The defensive mechanisms of most octopuses to eject black ink in a large cloud to aid in escape from predators.

[edit] Simulation

Simulation consists of exhibiting false information. There are three simulation techniques: mimicry (copying another model), fabrication (making up a new model), and distraction (offering an alternative model)

[edit] Mimicry

In the biological world, mimicry involves unconscious deception by similarity to another organism, or to a natural object. Animals for example may deceive predators or prey by visual, auditory or other means.

[edit] Fabrication

To make something that in reality is not what it appears to be. For example, in World War II, it was common for the Allies to use hollow tanks made out of cardboard to fool German reconnaissance planes into thinking a large armor unit was on the move in one area while the real tanks were well hidden and on the move in a location far from the fabricated "dummy" tanks.

[edit] Distraction

To get someone's attention from the truth by offering bait or something else more tempting to divert attention away from the object being concealed. For example, a security company publicly announces that it will ship a large gold shipment down one route, while in reality take a different route.

[edit] In social research

Some methodologies in social research, especially in psychology involve deception. The researchers purposely mislead or misinform the participants about the true nature of the experiment.

In an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 the researchers told participants that they would be participating in a scientific study of memory and learning. In reality the study looked at the participants' willingness to obey commands, even when that involved inflicting pain upon another person.

Use of deception raises many problems of research ethics and it is strictly regulated by professional bodies such as the American Psychological Association.

[edit] In psychological research

Psychological research often needs to deceive the participants (former term: subjects)as to its actual purpose. The rationale for such deception is that humans are sensitive to how they appear to others (and to themselves) and this self-consciousness might interfere with or distort from how they actually behave outside of a research context (where they would not feel they were being scrutinized). For example, if a psychologist is interested in learning the conditions under which students cheat on tests, directly asking them, "how often do you cheat?," might result in a high percent of "socially desirable" answers and the researcher would in any case be unable to verify the accuracy of these responses. What researchers could learn from this "ask the subject" procedure is what the students "say" they do, not necessarily what they actually do. In general, then, when it is unfeasible or naive to simply ask people directly why or how often they do what they do, researchers turn to the use of deception to distract their participants from the true behavior of interest. So, for example, in a study of cheating, the participants may be told that the study has to do with how intuitive they are and during the process they might be given the opportunity to look at (secretly, they think) another participant's [presumably highly intuitively correct] answers before handing in their own. At the conclusion of this or any research involving deception, all participants must be told of the true nature of the study and why deception was necessary (this is called debriefing). Moreover, it is customary to offer to provide a summary of the results to all participants at the conclusion of the research.

Though commonly used and allowed by the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association, APA.org there has been debate about whether or not the use of deception should be permitted in psychological research experiments.

Those against deception object to the ethical and methodological issues involved in its use. Dresser (1981) notes that, ethically, researchers are only to use subjects in an experiment after the subject has given informed consent. However, because of its very nature, a researcher conducting a deception experiment cannot reveal its true purpose to the subject, thereby making any consent given by a subject misinformed (p. 3). BaumrindMilgram (1963) obedience experiment, argues that deception experiments inappropriately take advantage of the implicit trust and obedience given by the subject when the subject volunteers to participate (p. 421). (1964), criticizing the use of deception in the

From a practical perspective, there are also methodological objections to deception. Ortmann and Hertwig (1998) note that “deception can strongly affect the reputation of individual labs and the profession, thus contaminating the participant pool” (p. 806). If the subjects in the experiment are suspicious of the researcher, they are unlikely to behave as they normally would, and the researcher’s control of the experiment is then compromised (p. 807).

Those who do not object to the use of deception note that there is always a constant struggle in balancing “the need for conducting research that may solve social problems and the necessity for preserving the dignity and rights of the research participant” (Christensen, 1988, p. 670). They also note that, in some cases, using deception is the only way to obtain certain kinds of information, and that prohibiting all deception in research would “have the egregious consequence of preventing researchers from carrying out a wide range of important studies” (Kimmel, 1998, p. 805).

Additionally, findings suggest that deception is not harmful to subjects. Christensen’s (1988) review of the literature found “that research participants do not perceive that they are harmed and do not seem to mind being misled” (p. 668). Furthermore, those participating in experiments involving deception “reported having enjoyed the experience more and perceived more educational benefit” than those who participated in non-deceptive experiments (p. 668).

Lastly, it has also been suggested that an unpleasant treatment used in a deception study or the unpleasant implications of the outcome of a deception study may be the underlying reason that a study using deception is perceived as unethical in nature, rather than the actual deception itself (Broder, 1998, p. 806; Christensen, 1988, p. 671).