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Comment by jxramos | Hacker News Reader

wow this is fascinating, taking the veneer of something in the tautological space and using it as sheep's clothing over something known to be a wolf. There's something curious about this form of misleading that deserves to be identified and named to be called out in future instances.

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"Foods containing sugar have been found to save lives in a number of studies."

"Regular smoking use is associated with lower BMI, which is shown to correlate with improved heart health and lower mortality rates."

"Use of fossil fuels powers a number of ecology-preserving tasks, allowing us to care for the environment in a way we could not without this amazing source of Earth-loving fuel."

You are far too good at crafting these passages.

It's fairly easy if you understand the meaning of "can be true". There can be countless instances where it's not true but if you find just _one_ instance where it's true, then your "can be true" statement must be true.

Love it.

It still needs a name. Here let me try:

Disproportionate benefit insinuation error: Implying (without explicitly stating that it has more benefits than disadvantages because that would be a disprovable lie) that because something has some benefit, it is overall helpful.

Or just "plausible deniability"- factually stating the existence of a beneficial tree, but omitting mention of the harmful forest

Or just "cherry-picking"

Or to cover cases where a harm is insinuated/emphasized in the same way in order to discredit something (see: literally all the antivax data, antiscience, antimedicine... "trust doctors, you mean like the ones who prescribed thalidomide?")... "Misrepresenting the forest"

maybe a good contraction would be a disbeni

It has a name, its called "sophistry", and the practitioners "sophists". [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist

Nice short episode on them here for those who are interested

https://historyofphilosophy.net/sophists

Gorgias was perhaps the most well-known ancient Sophist, and is also the namesake of one of Plato's Dialogues, which happens to be one of my favourites. Highly recommend reading the above, and into sophistry and rhetoric more generally, if you're the sort that gets annoyed by modern bullshit, and wants a set of names and tactics to defend the sanctity (and sanity) of your opinions.

Once you notice the "Weasel words" [1] you'll never see a press release like this one the same way again.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

This is called creating a narrative by cherry picking facts. This is what the media does, and is why so many people (most Americans per Pew) distrust them.

Disingenuous non sequitur?

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