Appeal to Novelty Fallacy

The ‘Appeal to Novelty‘ fallacy is a logical fallacy based on if something is new or recent, then it must be better. It is also called the appeal to new fallacy and in Latin it is argumentum ad novitatem. It is false to claim that something is good, just because it is new or novel. The opposite fallacy is the appeal to tradition, in which something is claimed to be good because it is older or traditional.

Whole marketing or advertising campaigns are often based around this fallacy and are based on getting people to believe that the product is new or novel, therefore better than other products. New or novel products may be or may not be better, but to appeal to that novelty or newness to claim that they are better is the logical fallacy.

Podiatry Relevance:
This fallacy was previously widely used to promote laser treatment of onychomycosis and shockwave therapy for plantar fasciitis when they first came on the market by claiming it was new and novel. More recently, digital or optical scanning of the foot is clamied to be better than the traditional use of plaster of paris casts of the foot based on the newness and novelty of the scanners. It may or may not be better, but using this fallacy does not mean that it is better. The most recent example is the use of additive technology for the 3D printing of foot orthotics. This does not mean that any of these technologies are good or not, its just means that the novelty fallacy was used to promote them.

Related Topics:
Logical fallacies | Appeal to tradition | 3D Printing of Foot Orthotics | Lasers for Onychomycosis | Shockwave Therapy | Digital Scanning

Pick Your Logical Fallacy:

Ad hominem	Bandwagon fallacy	Cherry Picking	False Analogy	Galileo Gambit
Appeal to Authority Fallacy	Burden of Proof Fallacy	Confirmation Bias	False Balance	Natural Fallacy
Appeal to ignorance	False Equivalence	Slippery Slope Fallacy	False Dilemma or Dichotomy	Non sequitur
Appeal to Novelty Fallacy	Special pleading logical fallacy	Straw Man	Tautology	Post hoc ergo propter hoc
Appeal to Tradition Fallacy	The Moving Goalpost	Wishful Thinking Fallacy	Shill Gambit	Ambiguity Fallacy
Post Hoc Fallacy	Shoehorning	Motivated reasoning	Causal Illusions	Cognitive Biases
It's Just a Theory	Tu quoque fallacy	‘It worked for me’ Fallacy	Argument by Analogy	Sunk Cost
Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies	An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments	The Critical Thinker's Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusions and What You Can Do About Them	Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies	Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language