A pamphlet urging growers of a tract not to trust the agriculture department reads: 'The department's officers know nothing of conditions in this tract and their advice has failed us again and again. Growers should sow only in the fortnight that the department's own bulletin names as best for this tract.' The pamphlet is most open to the objection that

The pamphlet's recommendation has exactly one support — the department's bulletin — and its opening paragraph is devoted to showing that this support is worth nothing. A grower who accepts the first half has been given a reason to ignore the second, and a grower who acts on the second has rejected the first, so the pamphlet cannot be taken whole. How many growers have followed the department in the past is a fact about the tract's habits and would not mend the contradiction. The second option answers a claim never made: the pamphlet recommends that growers use the bulletin, which does not require that they already read it. And whether a fortnight suffices for sowing the tract is a practical quibble about the recommendation, leaving untouched the fact that the pamphlet has demolished its own authority for it.