What is the logical fallacy that may itself be true but distracts us from the relevant issue at hand?

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A red herring is a tactic that introduces an irrelevant issue to distract from the main question. It can be true in its own right, but it sidesteps the point you’re trying to evaluate, steering the discussion toward something easier to argue about rather than addressing the actual issue.

This best fits when the goal is to test whether a claim is answered by focusing on the real topic, not on a tangential or unrelated point. For example, in a debate about policy effectiveness, shifting to a different concern like cost or politics—while arguably related—doesn’t directly test whether the policy would achieve the stated outcome. The distractor may be legitimate, but it doesn’t resolve the issue at hand, which is what the argument should be judged on.

If you compare with other fallacies, those focus on attacking the person, misrepresenting the argument, or presenting only two options, none of which inherently describe diverting attention with an unrelated but sometimes true side point.