The Lagoon TechMy little blog in Cyberspace.

This logical fallacy is known as the “genetic fallacy”. This fallacy occurs when someone dismisses or accepts an argument / claim based solely on its origin, rather than if the information itself is true or not.

One popular genetic fallacy I have encountered on the Internet is when people say “we cannot accept information from blogs” or “just because it’s on a blog, it is not factual information”.

For example, one subreddit I visited a few weeks ago, stated they do not accept personal blogs. Of course, their context was that blogs are not a “legitimate” source of information, while implying that “official” sources of information are accurate.

A couple of problems with this:  1) It is incorrect to say that all personal blogs are not legitimate sources of information, and 2) “official” news sources are not necessarily the best place to get accurate information too, and are not above having click-bait titles for their articles.

In other words, some blogs will have good info, others will not. Same goes for “official” news sources.

Summary: Genetic fallacies are nothing more than someone’s accepting / rejecting information solely based on the source or origin of said information, instead of checking if the information is accurate.