[4] This highlights the common quality of specious assertions being attractive in concept and pleasant to place belief in, thereby making them more readily adopted by the layperson despite a lack of factual basis or sound logical reasoning.
[1] The Vote Leave campaign surrounding the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of 2016 relied heavily on arguments that may now retrospectively be labelled as specious reasoning, making promises that were later established to be false or impossible to fulfill.
One such promise was that emblazoned on the side of the 'Brexit red bus', which implied that by leaving the EU, the UK would be able to reserve £350 million a week sent to the union and instead direct it into funding the NHS.
[5][6] Specious arguments have historically been used to argue against change that affects culturally accepted and profitable practices; such was the case when certain medical professionals tried to warn of the dangers of smoking tobacco.
[7] A common form of specious arguing, particularly in politics, is that of the Gish gallop, a rhetorical technique which sees the user overwhelm their opponent with a high volume of arguments with no regard for their accuracy, quality, or relevance.