This article is part of the chapter that explains how to refute an opposing speaker's arguments. In chapter 6 articles: What is a contradiction?, counter arguments, Contradiction using logic, Contradiction with facts, Contradiction using the rules of speech, and how to organize a speech and a contradiction.
Contradiction based on facts
An advantage of being better acquainted with the facts is the most obvious and sometimes the most destructive form of contradiction. A debate (especially in the British method that allocates limited preparation time) requires the speakers to have an extensive base of general knowledge in order to be able to reason both sides of the wide variety of propositions, and back up their reasoning with examples and numbers. Almost every proposal will bring the discussion to some set of factual examples or real case studies. The party with the best factual knowledge is always at an advantage.
The factual contradiction can take two forms. One of the forms is the reaction to the false claim made by the other side. In a debate dealing with the death penalty, for example, the government team could argue that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. The contradiction of this argument is simple: almost every piece of research, whether it is psychological or based on crime statistics, has shown that the death penalty is not actually a deterrent - the deterrent is the risk of being caught and not the rate of punishment. The crime rates of the states in America that reintroduced the death penalty, for example, did not decrease as a result. When the false argument forms the basis of part of your opponent's reasoning, proving that it is factually incorrect causes a breakdown.
How do you argue with facts if no facts have been presented?
The other type of factual contradiction is the presentation of the absence of facts in the event that no facts have been presented. To demonstrate this, take an example from the semi-finals of an inter-university competition in Great Britain. The proposal was, "This house would introduce compulsory voting". The government team presented a very persuasive argument when they claim that forcing the disenfranchised minorities to vote will force the major parties to take care of this population instead of only referring to middle-class England. Compulsory voting will make minorities a significant electoral force as it breaks the vicious cycle of disenfranchisement and makes the democratic system more representative. The first opposition responded along several different lines, and never understood the central argument. The emphasis ranged between the citizen's right to his time and the practical point of view, these points are obviously less important than the decisive advantage presented by the government. Only the second opposition presented a strong factual contradiction. The mandatory vote is not just a theory<
Rather, it was implemented in a number of countries, the most prominent of which are Australia and Belgium. In these countries, the same benefits claimed by the government were not observed for sure. In Australia, compulsory voting did not improve the lot of disenfranchised minorities such as aborigines, but it increased the voting of right-wing fringe groups like Pauline Hanson. Among the "minority" sides that benefited the most in Belgium were also the right-wing organizations. If the opposition had been able to raise this point in time - comparing the proposal team's theory with real world practices - they would have had a much better chance of winning. In another case, in an Israeli competition dealing with the cancellation of debt to Third World countries, the opposition claimed that there was no chance that First World countries would agree to this. When the concluding government brought three examples of the omission of debts by the US and France, the opposition lost the basis on which it rested its arguments. One must remember the risk of the factual contradiction, when in the debate there is no way to present the source of the data, your data will be as good as
The data is in front of you, and there is a risk of slipping into a debate in the style of "yes is true" versus "is not true". This situation is generally to the credit of the concluding opposition, which enjoys the last word. There is a rather cynical attitude towards "facts" put forward by debaters and they have no backing. I would like to claim that it should not be done and that I have never done it and I have never known anyone who fabricated data, but the truth is of course different. Unfortunately, none of us knows all the facts on all subjects by heart, so the best advice to give is simply "don't get caught"...