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No True Scotsman

The fallacy of attempting to make a generalization true by changing the generalization to exclude a counterexample.

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#Rhetoric & Language

Origin

British philosopher Antony Flew coined the term in his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking. He illustrated the fallacy with a story: a Scotsman reads about a crime and declares "No Scotsman would do such a thing," then, confronted with a Scottish perpetrator, retreats to "No true Scotsman would do such a thing."

Updated February 22, 2026