The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, without regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.
The term "Gish gallop" was coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott who named it after the American creationist Duane Gish, dubbed the technique's "most avid practitioner". [1]
During a typical Gish gallop, the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies, making it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate. [2] Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably longer to refute than to assert. The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved, or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics. [3]
The difference in effort between making claims and refuting them is known as Brandolini's law [4] or informally "the bullshit asymmetry principle". Another example is firehose of falsehoods.
Mehdi Hasan, a British journalist, suggests using three steps to beat the Gish gallop: [5]
Generally, it is more difficult to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than a free-form one. [6] If a debater is familiar with an opponent who is known to use the Gish gallop, the technique may be countered by pre-empting and refuting the opponent's commonly used arguments before the opponent has an opportunity to launch into the Gish gallop. [7]
A related technique is the reverse Gish gallop, where the galloper listens to the opponent's rebuttal; finds an error, approximation, or omission; then attacks that as a way to attack the opponent's credibility. For example, if the correct value is 43 and the opponent says "40" instead of "about 40", then the galloper can use that to suggest the opponent is sloppy and their other arguments are full of errors. [8] Another name suggested for this is weaponized pedantry. [9]
I have heard this referred to as a "Reverse Gish Gallop". [...] I don't think it captures the essence of the fallacy. I have used the term "weaponized pedantry" before and I think that is better.