FALLACY OF FALSE CAUSE: The logical fallacy of arguing that two events that are correlated (that is, happen at about the same time), are assumed to have a causal connection. In other words, one event causes the other. This was one of the more common fallacies committed by ancient ancestors. During the last full moon, your dog died. Obviously the full moon killed your dog. While this might seem reasonable to anyone spending their lives eating mastodon meat and sleeping in caves, it's actually the fallacy of false cause.

     See also | fallacy | fallacy of division | fallacy of composition | fallacy of false authority | fallacy of mass appeal | fallacy of personal attack | normative economics | positive economics | cause and effect | scientific method |