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“You're wrong! I know it, because ... umm ....”

Feel free to fill in the blank with any of a dozen phrases that don't really apply. I've probably seen it before: because your dad/boss/holy book told you so, because everyone else believes it, because it never happened to you, because I'm fat and ugly.

I don't want this column to descend into an ongoing argument with anonymous hecklers, but I've noticed some troubling trends among the postings at the end of articles on the Daily News' Web site. That alone I could discount, but the forum presents a microcosm of common situations in many national debates.

Since this space is by design a skeptical/rational look at various issues, I would like for the record to lay out clearly some of the constraints of logical argument.

I'm no logician, but I don't have to be - and neither does anyone else. The basics of reasonable argumentation are easy to learn, and readily available, whether online or from a book.

A good start is learning to recognize arguments that are inherently bogus because of their reliance on fallacies, or rhetorical tricks that sound persuasive but don't pass logical muster.

The point really is establishing validity. When talking about policies that deal with hard fact, from national immigration statistics to allocation of the city budget, in order to make valid points we have to be sure, first of all, that we're working from a good set of facts; then that we're putting those facts together in a manner that meets the accepted standards of logical debate.

When we reporters - at the Daily News and elsewhere - get complaints, often we must wonder if people have actually read the stories they're complaining about. We frequently get angry e-mails demanding to know why we didn't include some fact they consider vital, and accusing us of conspiracy to suppress the truth by leaving it out.

Sometimes things do get left out, whether inadvertently or because we simply didn't know the information they're wondering about. But the vast majority of the time we patiently reply that, if they'll look over the story again, they will see exactly that information in the fourth or fifth paragraph.

Simple anger or accusation does not make for a sturdy argument, though some of the messages we receive are quite abusive, and personally so (it's much easier, I know, to be rude in a fast e-mail than in a face-to-face discussion or time-consuming letter; some e-mailers have been abashed at their earlier words, on being asked to defend them in person).

Over the past few years I've seen several books bemoaning the collapse of civil discourse in an increasingly partisan country. I doubt that public debate was ever so measured and decorous as it appears in retrospect - I know from a study of history it was not; indeed, 19th-century propaganda could be just as crude as anything today - but there's no harm in trying to inject some order and civility, if only briefly and locally, into current discussions.

If nothing else, even if the worst culprits remain heedless, perhaps a few other readers will be able to put their fingers on exactly why some arguments are invalid.

There are any number of ways to blow a logical argument, but here are a few of the most common.

Lack of perspective - Many people have complained bitterly about Bowling Green's plan to build a skate park while not lowering the occupational tax to its pre-2003 level, and some city employees have snidely commented that city officials seem to always find money for such “pet” projects while being stingy with employee pay and benefits. This sounds reasonable until you look at the amount of money involved in each of those endeavors. The one-time expense of building a skate park, with an $850,000 price tag, is one-tenth of one percent of the city's budget. Insurance costs run more than $3 million a year, every year; and the occupational tax hike brought in several million. A skate park doesn't make an appreciable dent in those recurring expenses.

Straw man - A classic rhetorical trick is to claim that one's opponents support a particular position they don't really hold, then denounce that bogus position. To use another recent and local example, several posters on Daily News stories went on frenzied rants about the evils of city commissioners blowing local tax money on a whitewater park at the riverfront. These quickly spiraled into unsupported allegations of corruption, with only a few sensible people pointing out the truth: If they'd bothered to actually read the story before blowing up, they'd have seen that the mayor and commissioners have not, in fact, been talking about spending money on a whitewater park. All discussion thus far has centered around the idea of getting federal grants and tax-deductible corporate contributions to build the park.

Ad hominem - Though banned from our forums, one thing that pops up every day is the argument ad hominem, or “against the man.”

If a public figure makes a statement on some issue - incidents involving City Commissioner Brian “Slim” Nash spring to mind - it won't be long before someone responds by declaring, “ ‘Slim' Nash is fat.”

Fondness for second helpings has no bearing on public policy. Lest I be accused of making the same implication, I outweigh Slim by a considerable amount.

Popularity - Some things are argued as evidently true because “everyone” believes in them. We need only recall the many astonishing things that large numbers have believed in over the years to see the flaw here.

I recall Mark Twain's account of teenage flirting with an earnest young woman who, in response, tried to convert him to Methodism with this argument. She was sure her denomination must be entirely in the right, since it had several million members, and they couldn't all be wrong, could they?

Twain responded with a few figures of his own, inadvertently destroying his own romantic hopes by shocking her with the realization that other religions - which she had never encountered - far outnumbered her own coreligionists. At the time, Twain said if he went by the numbers, his money was on Hindus for superior spirituality through superior numbers. If we followed that reasoning today, perhaps we'd all better become Muslims.

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc/post hoc ergo propter hoc - Assuming that events which occur together, or one after another, must be related.

We invaded Iraq three years ago, and haven't been attacked by terrorists on U.S. soil since then; therefore occupying Iraq keeps terrorists out of this country - right?

This argument, very popular among the dwindling defenders of the Iraq war, ignores the host of other factors in play: increased homeland security (and several apparent thwarted plots since then), possible terrorist strategy of spreading attacks around (note major attacks across Europe and some in Asia), and the lack of any evidence that involvement in a war in one place necessarily prevents small groups from striking elsewhere.

Appeal to pity - Believe me, because I've had a rotten time. I must be right, because I've suffered. This is a favorite of celebrities on trial. But plays for sympathy don't change underlying facts.

Appeal to authority - A respected person or source advocates something, lending it credibility. This may, in some cases, add the luster of veracity to an argument. But it's no substitute for a logical demonstration, and one must always be cautious about ascribing authority on one subject to an expert in another. Advocates of “intelligent design” frequently trot out long lists of people with advanced academic degrees to support their opposition to evolutionary theory; but a close examination of those credentials often shows declarations on biology are being made by mathematicians and electrical engineers.