As I began to look through multiple different organizations, fishing for fallacies and logical discrepancies, there was one that significantly stood out to me: Girl Scouts. To be clear, I’m not necessarily against the Girl Scouts organization exactly; in fact I very much support their overall goal to empower young girls into becoming strong and independent women. However, I haven’t always agreed with the way in which they convey this message, and in reading their organization’s statement, I was less than compelled.

In less than four hundred words, they managed to mention the same few benefits multiple times, and only rephrased slightly each time.  In such a brief statement to begin with, there was little elaboration or support in justifying their benefits. Instead, they simply stated that girls within the program could learn new skills, take on leadership roles, and explore their potential. In fact, these two almost completely identical sentences:

“Girl Scouts is a place where she’ll practice different skills, explore her potential, take on leadership positions”

and

“…where girls can try new things, develop a range of skills, take on leadership roles,”

were separated only by an ineffective infographic as a buffer. Clearly, the organization has little information to back up their benefits, otherwise they would have more solid and diverse justifications.

Similarly, they inputted information that had the purpose of being factual scientific data as evidence, however there was absolutely no credibility ensured.  One quote says “research shows that girls learn best in an all-girl, girl-led, and girl-friendly environment.” but there are no results or references presented. For all we know, this could’ve been one small study that proved only what they wanted to hear. And in that case, they’d have a sweeping generalization on their hands. Otherwise, it is simply an appeal to ignorance; unless people actually looked into research studies to prove them right or wrong, most people are simply going to blindly follow what it says.

To round off their repetitious and poor spiel on why someone should support their Girl Scout troops, they’re simply over exaggerating the effectiveness of the program in saying  “Girl Scouts works. It’s the best leadership experience for girls in the world for one very good reason: because it’s girl-led!” Not only is it wrong to say that theirs is the best program in the world, they never even presented any information to back this up. The entire time they are relying on pathos and the empowering affect their words have, rather than providing any real logical evidence. The logic they DO provide is riddled with inconsistencies and fallacies.