Poisoning the well


Poisoning the well is a type of informal fallacy where irrelevant adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua. The origin of the term lies in well poisoning, an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army, to diminish the attacking army's strength.

Structure

Poisoning the well can take the form of an argument, and is considered by some philosophers an informal fallacy.
A poisoned-well "argument" has the following form:
Poisoned-well arguments are sometimes used with preemptive invocations of the association fallacy. In this pattern, an unfavorable attribute is ascribed to any future opponents, in an attempt to discourage debate. Any person who steps forward to dispute the claim will then risk applying the tag to him or herself in the process. This is a false dilemma: not all future opponents necessarily have the unfavorable attribute.
A poisoned-well "argument" can also be in this form:
Example 1
Tim: Boss, you heard my side of the story why I think Bill should be fired and not me. Now, I am sure Bill is going to come to you with some pathetic attempt to weasel out of this lie that he has created.