According to the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995), the term "Genetic Fallacy" originated in the book "Logic and Scientific Method", written by Morris Raphael Cohen and Ernest Nagel in 1934.

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It was originally used to describe a misuse of the scientific method (specifically, confusing an analysis of the logical structure of a scientific theory with an analysis of its history or origin). It is described by some as conflating the context of justification with the context of discovery

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