No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the
definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.
12 Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original
claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific
case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his
porridge."
Person B: "But my
uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."