"According to some newspapers today the crime rate in New York has slightly…

Concept: A fallacy is a flaw in an argument that makes its conclusion unreliable. In an informal fallacy the defect lies in the content and relevance of the premises rather than in the logical form of the argument. One standing rule of inductive support is that a conclusion about a whole class can never be wider than the sample or statistic offered to ground it; when the conclusion outruns that evidence base, the generalisation is unsound.

Application: The premise supplied here is narrow. Some newspapers report that the crime rate in New York has increased slightly in the recent past. The conclusion drawn is universal: that New Yorkers are nothing but a bunch of criminals, which is a claim about every member of the class. A small movement in a rate says nothing about what proportion of the population commits crime, so the reported statistic supports at most a modest statement about a trend. Moving from that thin base to a claim covering the entire population is a hasty generalisation, and that is the fallacy committed in the statement.

Cross-check: the other named fallacies follow different patterns, and none of them matches this statement.

• Slippery slope: one step is claimed to set off a chain of further steps ending in a grave outcome, with the links of the chain left unsupported. The statement predicts no such chain of consequences.

• Appeal to inappropriate authority: a claim is rested on the word of a source who holds no relevant expertise in the matter. The newspapers are cited only as the source of a statistic, and the flaw lies in the inference built on that statistic rather than in the standing of the source.

• Strawman: an opponent’s actual position is replaced by a distorted, weaker version, which is then refuted. No opposing position is stated in the passage, so there is nothing being misrepresented.

Result: the statement leaps from a slight, reported rise in one crime statistic to a sweeping claim about all New Yorkers, which is the pattern of a hasty generalisation.