A good lake, not a great lake 63%

By The Curious City Team82%

7/8/2026, 10:00:00 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Biased Writer Voice, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 28.4% saturation with 40 hits. Analysis detected 360 faulty-reasoning hits from 141 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58.6% and a BS Rank of 63% (6,613 of 17,815 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 62.90% of the article peer group.

For a brief time in 1998, there were six Great Lakes instead of five. 
The change quickly made national headlines, and Midwesterners took notice. 
They were shocked and outraged. 
Wedged between New York and Vermont, Lake Champlain is long, skinny, and relatively small  only 435 square miles. 
It just didn’t measure up to the other Great Lakes. 
How this lake made it into this exclusive club has to do with some language quietly added to an uncontroversial bill in Congress. 
Curious City partners with the Points North podcast from Interlochen Public Radio to dive into the story behind Lake Champlain’s short stint as a Great Lake. 
Press play to listen and read the story here. 
Points North is a podcast about the land, water, and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. 
Follow them @pointsnorthpodcast 
Confirmation Bias
16.3%
Anchoring Bias
0%
Availability Heuristic
17%
Representativeness Heuristic
13.5%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
0%
Framing Effect
28.4%
Loss Aversion
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
0%
Negativity Bias
15.6%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Halo Effect
0%
Horn Effect
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Recency Bias
6.4%
Primacy Effect
0%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Straw Man
0%
Appeal to Authority
10.6%
False Dilemma
0%
Slippery Slope
0%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Hasty Generalization
0%
Red Herring
0%
Bandwagon
9.2%
Appeal to Emotion
10.6%
Begging the Question
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
16.3%
Tu Quoque
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Composition/Division
0%
Anecdotal
0%
No True Scotsman
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
23.4%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Middle Ground
5%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Unattributed Quote
16.3%
Quote-first Misdirection
0%
Biased Writer Voice
23.4%
Indoctrination
16.3%
Politically Left Leaning Bias
0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias
0%
Attempt to Sell a Product or Service
27%

141 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.