PT140 · S1 · Q24 Pediatrician: Swollen tonsils give

This is the famous Inappropriate Appeal flaw, but this argument didn't rely on a dubious expert.

This describes the famous Circular Reasoning flaw, in which the evidence restates the conclusion or assumes the conclusion is true. But we're not critiquing this argument by saying that the author's evidence involves repeating or already-believing the conclusion. We're saying the author only managed to prove that preemptively removing tonsils would make children less likely to experience breathing problems during sleep; she didn't prove that kids would never have breathing problems. The author relies on the assumption that "swollen tonsils are the only possible source of breathing problems", and that does not match her conclusion. (tantamount = essentially the same as) I could say, "Asking Jill to move in with me was tantamount to proposing that she marry me."

This refers to the famous Intent vs. Result flaw, in which authors conflate whether or not an action was intended to do X with whether or not the action had the consequence of doing X. We definitely weren't complaining about that kind of switch.

Since this starts with fails to consider, we can ask ourselves, "Would it weaken the argument to tell the author that there may be other reasons to remove tonsils?" Nope. It would only hurt the author if we said, "there may be other medical conditions that give rise to breathing problems at night."