Contradicting false claims serves the claimant, not just the audience

Evidence

Anyone who spreads objectively false information that is not just trivial entertainment, but has real, possibly harmful consequences, deserves to be contradicted. With this contradiction you help yourself not to be condemned to inaction, which you may regret later. You help listeners and fellow readers not to accept false claims as perceived truths at some point, because they have always remained unchallenged. But it also helps the person spreading the false claims, because they can otherwise chalk up the lack of contradiction as confirmation and miss a chance to challenge their unscientific beliefs. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 805

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘The kindness of contradiction’ — how quiet dissent from error is an act of respect toward the person holding it.
• XREF: connects to: Disputing a method can serve to deny the phenomenon the method reveals. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2043; Spicer’s falsehood was an act of submission rather than a lie.; Refuting a lie aims at its audience, not the liar — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 315

Related

• Refuting a lie aims at its audience, not the liar (similarity 0.83)
• Spicer’s falsehood was an act of submission rather than a lie. (similarity 0.81)