UGC NET Questions (Paper – 1)

Statements D and E are wrong, whereas A, B, C and F are correct descriptions of informal fallacies and critical thinking. Hasty generalisation actually involves insufficient or biased samples, not large and representative ones, so D reverses the definition. Slippery slope arguments can be fallacious when the alleged chain of events is not well supported, so E is also false. A, B and C correctly identify ad hominem, straw man and false cause, and F rightly points out the value of spotting fallacies. Therefore the wrong statements are exactly D and E.

Option A:
Option A is incorrect because it selects only D as wrong and ignores E, which also mischaracterises slippery slope arguments. By treating only one of the two erroneous statements as wrong, it fails to capture the full set of incorrect claims. Hence D only cannot be accepted.

Option B:
Option B is also incomplete since it marks only E as wrong and overlooks the error in D about hasty generalisation. Both D and E distort standard definitions, so recognising only one of them gives an incomplete diagnosis. For that reason E only is not a satisfactory answer.

Option C:
Option C is correct because it groups D and E, the two statements that clearly conflict with the usual treatment of these fallacies. It leaves A, B, C and F intact, all of which match textbook descriptions of informal fallacies and their role in reasoning. This option therefore identifies the complete set of wrong statements.

Option D:
Option D is wrong because it adds C to D and E as though C were also false. In fact, C correctly describes a common form of false cause reasoning where correlation is mistaken for causation. Including C among wrong statements therefore makes the option logically inconsistent.

The post hoc fallacy, often summarised as “after this, therefore because of this”, mistakes mere temporal order for genuine causation. It assumes that because event A precedes event B, A must have caused B, ignoring other possible causes or coincidental sequences. Proper causal reasoning requires additional evidence such as mechanisms, controlled comparisons or repeated patterns, not just timing. Thus the error described in the stem is the post hoc fallacy.

Option A:
Option A, slippery slope, warns that a small initial step will lead inevitably to a chain of increasingly severe consequences, usually without adequate support for the inevitability. It does not centre on inferring causation solely from temporal sequence.

Option B:
Option B is correct because post hoc specifically captures the confusion between succession in time and causation. Recognising this fallacy reminds us that correlation, especially when inferred only from “came after”, is not sufficient to establish cause.

Option C:
Option C, red herring, distracts from the main issue by introducing an irrelevant topic, but it does not rely on any assumption about the order of events.

Option D:
Option D, weak analogy, draws an inference from a comparison where the similarities are not strong or relevant enough to support the conclusion; again, it is different from the time-based error in question.