28) The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the residents of mental.
Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, for the past several decades, food-processing companies have also been adding salicylates to foods as preservatives. This rise in the commercial use of salicylates has been found to correlate with a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by participants in our twenty-year study. Recently, food-processing companies have found that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives in foods. With this new use of salicylates, we can expect a continued steady decline in the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author predicts that there will be fewer people who suffer from headaches because of salicylates, a new flavor additive for food, which can treat headaches. However, this conclusion is still unwarranted in that the author does not clearly prove some important assumption, on which this conclusion depends.
Above all, the author has to substantiate the most crucial assumption that it is the rise in using salicylates that result in the decline of headaches in the study. Exactly because of this assumption the author believes that the salicylate can cure headaches. Yet the correlation, the author mentions in his statement, is not equal to the causality. In fact, this decline can arise from various factors， like the change of lifestyle or habits, other useful medicines, the attention to the health and so on, not just salicylates. Without ruling out these possible factors, the author cannot arbitrarily ensure the effectiveness of salicylates. Thus, the prediction is unconvincing unless the author possesses direct evidences of this causal relationship.
Secondly, the author also wrongly considers that food-processing companies are willing to commercially add salicylates in foods. The possibility and the ability of using salicylates as food additives do not mean that companies do want to utilize salicylates. For special companies that only produce additive-free foods, they never use additives at all. To normal companies, since there is no evidence in this argument to testify that as a flavor additive the salicylate is better then the traditional additives, it is hardly to ensure they will choose salicylates. If salicylates are more expensive than or not as good as conventional flavor additives, companies surely will not apply salicylates, not mention the commercial application. So in this case, the conclusion becomes doubtful as well.
Despite the additives, the author supposes that salicylates that put in foods as additives can be utilized as effectively as salicylates that is used as preservatives, while this assumption can be refuted from at least two aspects. On one hand, considering different functions, there may be differences between two kinds of salicylates, although they are the same substances. As flavor additives, salicylates are possibly processed in other ways, which will reduce the efficacy. If so, these salicylates are useless to headaches. On the other hand, people in Mentia may not be willing to buy foods that contain salicylates as the flavor additives. If so, the salicylate cannot have its effect too. Given this, the author’s conclusion remains to be further discussed.
All in all, in the absence of the clear illustration of these assumptions, the author’s prediction is far from persuasive. To stronger this statement, the author needs to launch some surveys or experiments to test the effectiveness of two kinds of salicylates, and then persuade foods companies to accept this new additive. In this way the author can ameliorate his statement more or less.