6 Rebuttal

The thing about arguments is people disagree with each other.

They express those disagreements through what we call a rebuttal.

For example, this is a cigarette ad from 1990, targeted specifically at women. It essentially claims, "Smoking makes you look good."

This ad makes a claim.

This ad makes a rebuttal to that claim:

This ad makes a counter-claim.

The smoking ads above are both pretty glib:

Claim: "Smoking makes you look good."
Counter-claim (rebuttal): "No, it doesn't; smoking makes you look ugly."

But a rebuttal is actually a counter-argument, so it can also have claims, reasons, evidence and so on.

Like any argument, what you include in the rebuttal depends on how thorough you want to be.

A rebuttal can also target any component of an argument. You can dispute issue, claim, evidence, reasoning—anything can be challenged.

Here's a snippet from the New York Times about saturated fat and heart disease. What's the main claim?

Many of us have long been told that saturated fat, the type found in meat, butter and cheese, causes heart disease. But a large and exhaustive new analysis by a team of international scientists found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.

"Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link"

Now, here's a snippet of a rebuttal published by a professor of nutrition at Cornell University.

Can you see how the rebuttal contains its own argument components? (You might dispute our highlighting of reason vs evidence.)

What component/s of the original argument do you think the rebuttal challenges? Issue? Claim? Reasoning? Evidence?

The New York Times has done it again, reporting on a summary of studies on the associations of various dietary and clinical risk factors with heart disease in a way that creates, in my opinion, more confusion than clarity. According to journalist Anahad O’Connor, the researchers claimed that saturated fat, "the type found in meat, butter and cheese", does not cause heart disease, suggesting that it is not as bad as we have been led to believe. Both the researchers’ report and the journalist’s commentary illustrate the huge costs of scientific reductionism.

I propose that this argument for or against saturated fat should have been moot from the very beginning of this research. Here’s why. The original hypothesis that dietary fat is chiefly responsible for heart disease began with laboratory studies over a century ago and the findings were, at best, uncertain. Much more impressive evidence also was published to show that the early stages of heart disease were increased much more by dietary protein than by dietary fat, especially the protein in animal-based foods.

"A Fallacious, Faulty and Foolish Discussion About Saturated Fat"

The New York Times has done it again, reporting on a summary of studies on the associations of various dietary and clinical risk factors with heart disease in a way that creates, in my opinion, more confusion than clarity. According to journalist Anahad O’Connor, the researchers claimed that saturated fat, "the type found in meat, butter and cheese", does not cause heart disease, suggesting that it is not as bad as we have been led to believe. Both the researchers’ report and the journalist’s commentary illustrate the huge costs of scientific reductionism.

I propose that this argument for or against saturated fat should have been moot from the very beginning of this research. Here’s why. The original hypothesis that dietary fat is chiefly responsible for heart disease began with laboratory studies over a century ago and the findings were, at best, uncertain. Much more impressive evidence also was published to show that the early stages of heart disease were increased much more by dietary protein than by dietary fat, especially the protein in animal-based foods.

"A Fallacious, Faulty and Foolish Discussion About Saturated Fat"

The New York Times has done it again, reporting on a summary of studies on the associations of various dietary and clinical risk factors with heart disease in a way that creates, in my opinion, more confusion than clarity. According to journalist Anahad O’Connor, the researchers claimed that saturated fat, "the type found in meat, butter and cheese", does not cause heart disease, suggesting that it is not as bad as we have been led to believe. Both the researchers’ report and the journalist’s commentary illustrate the huge costs of scientific reductionism.

I propose that this argument for or against saturated fat should have been moot from the very beginning of this research. Here’s why. The original hypothesis that dietary fat is chiefly responsible for heart disease began with laboratory studies over a century ago and the findings were, at best, uncertain. Much more impressive evidence also was published to show that the early stages of heart disease were increased much more by dietary protein than by dietary fat, especially the protein in animal-based foods.

"A Fallacious, Faulty and Foolish Discussion About Saturated Fat"

What component/s of the original argument do you think the rebuttal challenges? Issue? Claim? Reasoning? Evidence?

The rebuttal appears to reject everything!

It definitely disputes the claim that dietary fats don't affect heart health.

But it also challenges the broader framing of the issue and the underlying reasoning by arguing that focusing on dietary fats specifically is the wrong thing to be doing. (The author argues that this argument "should have been moot" because the problem isn't saturated fats specifically but rather animal-based foods in general.)

You can imagine the author going on to dispute the evidence as well.

(You might also notice that the original argument's claim becomes the rebuttal's issue—that disputed claim is the problem to be solved.)

In both the examples above, the argument and its rebuttal are separate. They are made by different people at different times.

But you can, when making an argument, anticipate other people's rebuttals and include them in your argument.

You might do this to limit your argument, explore the evidence, or respond to objections in advance (and make a counter-counter argument).

For example, the New York Times article we snipped above presents claims and rebuttals from both sides of the argument:

"My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about" in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the new study and a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University.

But Dr. Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the findings should not be taken as "a green light" to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat. He said that looking at individual fats and other nutrient groups in isolation could be misleading, because when people cut down on fats they tend to eat more bread, cold cereal and other refined carbohydrates that can also be bad for cardiovascular health.

"The single macronutrient approach is outdated," said Dr. Hu, who was not involved in the study. "I think future dietary guidelines will put more and more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cutoff point for certain macronutrients."

"Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link"

Rebuttals require context, which makes them a little hard to practice.

Acknowledging that issue, let's do a quick Balderdash-style activity where you try to dispute different aspects of an argument.

This ad claims that Godzilla would not be such a monster if he only had a Snickers bar.

Imagine this was part of a bigger argument that people were having about Godzilla. Can you imagine some funny but relevant rebuttals to different components?

Godzilla is awesome except when he's hungry Snickers ad

How might you rebut this argument?

Can you come up with quick, funny, relevant rebuttals to parts of this argument. (Issue. Claim. Reasoning. Evidence.)

You could make up all sorts of rebuttals:

Dispute issue: Godzilla is not a problem.
Dispute claim: Godzilla is terrible whether or not he's hungry; he just wants to wage war on mankind.
Dispute reasoning: Godzilla might be in a better mood when he's not hungry, but a Snickers bar is not big enough to satisfy him.
Dispute evidence: People have offered Godzilla Snickers during his various rampages, and it has not stopped him.

In a nutshell

We can challenge any part of an argument.
- The standard term for this is rebuttal.
- You could also use terms like challenge, dispute, contest, or attack.
The most common targets are evidence and reasoning:
- "This evidence is not true!"
- "That evidence was misinterpreted!"
- "This other evidence was left out entirely!"
- "And none of the evidence supports your reasoning!"
We can also challenge the issue ("This issue isn't even relevant!") and limits ("This problem is far more common than you suggest!").
A rebuttal is an argument in its own right, so it can also have its own argument components.
A good argument will anticipate possible objections and provide counter-counter-arguments.
If the speaker wants to explore all sides of the issue, they might be as interested in the rebuttal as they are in the main argument!

Eight argument components