Illegal Immigrant Kills 4 Children, page 2

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
Ahh, no it is not flawed. It's the friggin truth. You just don't want to face it. If they weren't here, there would not be this story. Truth. Plain and simple.

This thread is ripe with logical fallacies. For example

Misleading vividness
www.nizkor.org...

Misleading Vividness is a fallacy in which a very small number of particularly dramatic events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. Dramatic or vivid event X occurs (and is not in accord with the majority of the statistical evidence) .
2. Therefore events of type X are likely to occur.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because the mere fact that an event is particularly vivid or dramatic does not make the event more likely to occur, especially in the face of significant statistical evidence.

Questionable Cause
www.nizkor.org...

1. A and B are associated on a regular basis.
2. Therefore A is the cause of B.

The general idea behind this fallacy is that it is an error in reasoning to conclude that one thing causes another simply because the two are associated on a regular basis. More formally, this fallacy is committed when it is concluded that A is the cause of B simply because they are associated on a regular basis. The error being made is that a causal conclusion is being drawn from inadequate evidence.

Division
www.nizkor.org...

The fallacy of Division is committed when a person infers that what is true of a whole must also be true of its constituents and justification for that inference is not provided.

There are two main variants of the general fallacy of Division:

The first type of fallacy of Division is committed when 1) a person reasons that what is true of the whole must also be true of the parts and 2) the person fails to justify that inference with the required degree of evidence. More formally, the "reasoning" follows this sort of pattern:

1. The whole, X, has properties A, B, C, etc.
2. Therefore the parts of X have properties A, B, C, etc.

That this line of reasoning is fallacious is made clear by the following case: 4 is an even number. 1 and 3 are parts of 4. Therefore 1 and 3 are even.

Biased Sample
www.nizkor.org...

Also Known as: Biased Statistics, Loaded Sample, Prejudiced Statistics, Prejudiced Sample, Loaded Statistics, Biased Induction, Biased Generalization
Description of Biased Sample

This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is biased or prejudiced in some manner. It has the following form:

1. Sample S, which is biased, is taken from population P.
2. Conclusion C is drawn about Population P based on S.

The person committing the fallacy is misusing the following type of reasoning, which is known variously as Inductive Generalization, Generalization, and Statistical Generalization:

1. X% of all observed A's are B''s.
2. Therefore X% of all A's are Bs.

The fallacy is committed when the sample of A's is likely to be biased in some manner. A sample is biased or loaded when the method used to take the sample is likely to result in a sample that does not adequately represent the population from which it is drawn.

There are others, but I've only got time for a few right now.