Moving the goalposts

Moving the goalpost, also known as raising the bar, is an informal logically fallacious argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. In other words, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt. This attempts to leave the impression that an argument had a fair hearing while actually reaching a preordained conclusion. Moving the goalpost can also take the form of reverse feature creep, in which features are eliminated from a product, and the goal of the project is redefined in such a way as to exclude the eliminated features.

Example
Bella Donna claims that Sybil Antwhisper, her room-mate, is not sharing the housework equitably. Sybil tells Bella to go away and itemize and record who does what household tasks. If Bella can show that she does more housework than Sybil, then Sybil will mend her ways. A week passes and Bella shows Sybil clear evidence that Sybil does not "pull her weight" around the house. Sybil (the advocate) responds: "That's all very well, but I have more work and study commitments than you do – you should do more housework than me... it's the total work of all kinds that matters, not just housework."

In this example the implied agreement between Bella and Sybil at the outset was that the amount of housework done by both parties should be about the same. When Sybil was confronted by the evidence however, she quickly and unilaterally "changed the terms of the debate". She did this because the evidence was against her version of events and she was about to lose the argument on the issue as originally defined. By "moving the goalposts" Sybil is seeking to change the terms of the dispute to avoid a defeat on the original issue in contention.

The term is often used in business to imply bad faith on the part of those setting goals for others to meet, by arbitrarily making additional demands just as the initial ones are about to be met.

Accusations of this form of abuse tend to occur when there are unstated assumptions that are obvious to one party but not to another. For example, killing all the fleas on a cat is very easy without the usually unstated condition that the cat remain alive and in good health.