Red Herring: The Art of Changing the Subject
"Yes, but what about..." — three words that can derail any argument. The red herring is the oldest diversionary tactic in the rhetorical playbook: change the subject, confuse the trail, escape scrutiny. Named after a pungent smoked fish, it is as pervasive in political debate as it is in crime fiction. Understanding it is essential to keeping any conversation on track.
The Fish Behind the Fallacy
The phrase "red herring" has a surprisingly contested etymology. The most popular story involves fox hunting in 18th-century England: a strongly smelling smoked herring was dragged across a fox's trail to confuse the hounds, either to train them to follow the real scent or, in a counter-narrative, to sabotage the hunt and give the fox a chance to escape. The vivid image stuck: a false trail, a misleading scent, a distraction from the real quarry.
However, etymologist Michael Quinion and a 2008 study by Professor Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross — later accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary — cast doubt on the hunting origin. The idiom, they argue, more likely derives from political journalism: an 1807 essay by journalist William Cobbett used the image of a herring dragged across a trail as a metaphor for how newspapers were distracted from the real issues of the day by false reports. Whether hunting or journalism, the meaning is identical: a deliberate distraction from the real question.
As a logical fallacy, the red herring belongs to the family of irrelevant conclusion — technically called ignoratio elenchi (Latin for "ignoring the refutation"). Aristotle catalogued a version of it in his Sophistical Refutations. The modern formalisation is straightforward: the speaker introduces a topic that is irrelevant to the original argument, deliberately or otherwise, and the conversation follows it off course.
How It Works: The Mechanics of Distraction
A red herring works by exploiting the conversational norms of polite discourse. In most exchanges, we follow the thread — we respond to what has just been said rather than policing whether it relates to what was originally at issue. This makes it easy to smuggle in a change of subject without anyone noticing. By the time the new topic has been debated for a few minutes, the original question has faded from view.
The structure is typically:
- Person A raises claim or challenge X.
- Person B responds not by addressing X but by raising unrelated point Y.
- The conversation shifts to Y. X is never resolved.
The fallacy can be deliberate or accidental. Politicians deploy it intentionally when a question threatens to expose an inconvenient truth. But people also stumble into it when they genuinely believe a tangentially related point is relevant — or when they're simply better prepared to talk about Y than X.
Red Herrings in Political Debate
Politics is the natural habitat of the red herring. A few recognisable patterns:
- The scandal pivot. Politician asked about failing infrastructure policy deflects to their opponent's personal conduct. "That's interesting, but what about Senator X's financial dealings?" The policy failure goes unaddressed.
- The historical distraction. Pressed on current human rights violations, a government spokesperson pivots to examples of past violations by the accusing country. The present is never examined.
- The complexity shield. "This is a very complicated issue with many factors..." followed by an extended exposition of loosely related background information that never returns to the specific claim at issue.
- The statistics bait-and-switch. Asked about unemployment figures for a specific demographic, a minister produces impressive overall employment statistics. The original question disappears under the weight of the favourable numbers.
Note the overlap with Whataboutism — itself a specific variant of the red herring, where the deflection involves pointing to equivalent wrongdoing by the other side. The difference is subtle: all whataboutism is a red herring, but not all red herrings are whataboutism.
In Everyday Arguments
Red herrings appear wherever conflict or accountability is being avoided:
- "You're saying I drink too much — but have you seen how stressed I've been at work?" (The stress may be real, but it doesn't address the drinking.)
- "You're criticising my cooking? You haven't even cleaned the bathroom this week." (Unrelated complaint introduced to shift blame.)
- "Kids today are so dependent on phones — back in my day we used to play outside." (Nostalgia introduced to avoid engaging with the specific argument being made about screen-time.)
In these cases the red herring often functions as an emotional defence mechanism rather than a calculated strategy — but the logical effect is the same. The original point is abandoned, and the conversation follows the distraction.
Red Herrings in Media and Culture
Interestingly, the red herring has a positive role in one domain: fiction. Mystery novels and films deliberately plant false leads — suspects who seem guilty, clues that point the wrong way — to maintain suspense and surprise. Agatha Christie was a master of the narrative red herring; every plausible suspect introduced to mislead the reader is technically one. Here, the distraction is part of the artistic contract rather than a violation of intellectual honesty.
The confusion between rhetorical red herrings (bad) and narrative ones (legitimate) sometimes leads to defensive claims: "I wasn't avoiding the question — I was just providing context." This is worth watching for. Context that genuinely illuminates an issue is valuable. Context introduced specifically to bury the question is a red herring dressed as helpfulness.
How to Spot and Counter It
Identifying a red herring in real time requires holding the original question in mind as the conversation evolves. A few practical strategies:
- Keep a mental anchor. Before you engage with the new topic, ask: "Does this actually address the original question?" If not, name it: "That's an interesting point, but we were discussing X — can we come back to that?"
- Watch for sudden topic changes. A sharp pivot to a completely different subject — especially when the original question was pointed — is a signal.
- Distinguish related from relevant. Something can be thematically related but logically irrelevant. "Unemployment figures are down" is related to economic policy but doesn't address a specific claim about wage stagnation.
- Press the point gently. "I hear that — but we haven't actually addressed the original question yet. Can we?" Most people will either answer or reveal, by their continued evasion, that they have no answer to give.
Related Fallacies and Tactics
The red herring is a genus with several species. Related moves include:
- Straw Man — which distorts the original argument before attacking it
- Tu Quoque — deflecting criticism by pointing to the critic's own behaviour
- Whataboutism — deflecting by pointing to the other side's equivalent wrongs
- Ad Hominem — shifting from the argument to an attack on the person making it
What all these share is the fundamental move: abandon the argument on its merits, win by changing the terrain.
Why It Matters
In a healthy discourse, claims are addressed on their merits and questions receive answers proportionate to their importance. The red herring is a structural attack on that norm. When it goes unchallenged — especially in political debate, where powerful actors have strong incentives to avoid scrutiny — accountability erodes. The question that should have been answered becomes the question that was drowned out.
That's not a smoked fish story. That's a description of how political evasion works at scale.
Sources & Further Reading
- Aristotle. Sophistical Refutations. 350 BCE.
- Cohen, Gerald & Ross, Robert Scott. "The Etymology of 'Red Herring.'" Comments on Etymology, 2008.
- Walton, Douglas. Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
- Quinion, Michael. Red Herring — World Wide Words
- Wikipedia: Red herring (fallacy)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies