The red herring fallacy is a logical fallacy that allows irrelevant facts to form our opinions about something. It can also help us become better writers, especially if we’re into mystery and detective fiction. It can help us improve our overall reasoning, communication, and decision-making skills. Learning how to recognize this fallacy is more than useful. And it often goes unnoticed, leading to faulty conclusions and not very wise decisions. But very often, people make this kind of fallacy without any second thought. Sometimes they use it on purpose, to persuade their audience into something. Politicians, lawyers, life coaches, marketers, public speakers-and ordinary people like you and me-use it frequently. Have you ever been duped by a red herring? Share in the comments section.Red herring fallacy is a funny name for something we encounter all the time, especially when we participate (or just listen to) emotionally charged debates. Sometimes it's okay for the red herring to be the actual right track, as long as your herring isn't a three-day-old herring that's stinking to high heaven and making your readers sick. Rowling became reader-savvy as a result, and in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry's suspicions that Draco Malfoy and Professor Snape are involved in the evildoing are actually proven right in the end. This information would destroy her career if it got out, so she chooses to keep mum, even though she has an alibi for the murder.Īs much as you want to avoid the obvious red herring, highly well-read individuals may be so genre savvy that they can identify a red herring as soon as it's introduced in the story.

However, when Elle goes to see Brooke on a solo prison visit, Brooke (a commercial fitness guru) reveals that on the day of the murder, she was having liposuction. She can't give an alibi, and her stepdaughter has told an eyewitness account of Brooke standing over the dead body with gun in hand, so it looks pretty bad for Brooke. LOST is full of them, The Killing is a study in them, Agatha Christie was the queen of them in the mystery genre, and the Harry Potter series sees every possible red herring/not red herring combination there is.īut how do you create a good red herring?Ī good red herring should weave easily into the details of the story. For example, in Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon's character Elle Woods is working a trial defending Brooke Wyndham, who is accused of killing her husband.

Red herrings are all over the place in literature and film. Examples of Red Herrings in Film and Literature When the dog followed the fish scent, the dog had followed a red herring (or sardines trainers probably weren't too picky). Since fish have a distinct and powerful odor, they were sometimes used to train the dogs to stick to the scent they were tracking when their doggie instincts were telling them that something else smells much more interesting. Usually when a dog was tracking a scent, it wasn't the only scent competing for the dog's attention. The term has its origins in the training for hunting dogs. What is a red herring? Here's a good working definition:Ī red herring is a clue that takes the reader and/or characters in the wrong direction.

Red herrings are staples of the mystery and suspense genres, but they also can pop up in myriad other works and genres.

Photo by Nicolas Alejandro (creative commons).

Example of a red herring fallacy