Straw-man advocacy

About

Straw-man packing is a technique in which a field of debate in on a particular subject is packed by proponents of one view with especially weak, ineffective, or foolish arguments (i.e. straw men) for the opposing view. This causes most naive onlookers to assume that the latter view is only supported by weak and foolish arguments, and therefore to dismiss anyone arguing that view regardless of whether they may have strong or valid arguments to support it.

One way to accomplish this without a deliberate conspiracy is if all major informational venues simply focus their discussion of the issue in question on only the weakest arguments, essentially practicing collective denialism.

Examples

The primary example of this technique is the consistent straw-manning of the 9/11 truth movement, resulting in widespread 9/11 anomaly denial; there are probably others, however.