psychoceramics: disagreement as validation

[Ken Alexander <kalex @ eecs.umich.edu>]

> Also, long descriptions of the authorities who
> had rejected their work, described in such a way as to indicate that every
> disagreement is a further ratification of their ideas.

I've noticed a more blatant form of this recently, in which not just the
form of the opposing argument is used as further ratification, but the
*very existence* of disagreement is taken as proof of validity.

You can see this anytime John "End of Science" Horgan speaks.
He claims that science is over because we've discovered everything already.
Anytime he is questioned, whether on television or in the Wired debate or
even in a private email to me (in response to me telling him he's a pinhead),
he states some form of:  "note that you are taking the time to argue with me,
therefore I must be correct". 

He's a staff writer for Scientific American, and in the recent issue he
has taken up a new cause: that Freud was totally right all along.  
He justifies his position by saying that people debate him any time he
suggests this, therefore he must be right.

I propose that we name this fallacy "Horganism" in his honor.