argument137 GOGOGO

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137The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."

Outline：
1 survey
2 人们不下水可能不是因为水不好
3 治水后人们不一定就愿意来
4 改善土地和水质没有直接关系

In this argument, the author recommends that Mason City council should increase the budget to improve the publicly owned lands along the Mason River because of the increasing recreation of the river. In order to support this recommendation, the author cites certain survey of the region’s residents and it shows that water sports are the favorite form of recreation in this area. And then, the author also cites that the agency responsible for rivers in the region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. The recommendation seems to be reasonable at the first glance, but with further analysis, it appears to suffer from several logic fallacies as follow.

To begin with, the author considers that water sports are favorite games in Mason City base on the surveys. But the result of the survey might be unreliable in two respects. Firstly, we are not informed whether the survey’s respondents were representative of the overall population of the residents live in Mason City. Secondly, the author provides no information about the how many respondents in the survey. It is entirely possible that the report was based on an insufficiently small sample. Without ruling out these possible scenarios, the author can not reasonably rely on these statistics to support the claim that region's residents consistently rank water sports as a favorite form of recreation.

Furthermore, the author assumes that the residents of Mason City seldom use the river for any kind of recreational activity because of the poor quality of the water. But there are insufficient evidences provided for this purpose. Perhaps the residents of Mason City do not have enough equipment for the entertainment in the river or have no time to play. Lacking such evidence, the author could not make the conclusion that the Mason City’s residents do not like to enjoy games in the river due to the quality of the water.

Moreover, even if the poor quality of the water result in the decline of the entertainment in the Mason River, the author concludes too hastily that the recreational use of the river will increase only because the agency responsible for rivers in this region plans to clean up Mason River. Maybe there are many other games such as football and golf that will attract the residents of Mason City. Without the enough information about the requirement of Mason River’s residents, I do not believe that the entertainment in the Mason River will increase.

Finally, even assuming that the income for the recreational use of the river is increased, the recommendations that increasing its budget for improvements to the publicly owned land along the Mason River should be questioned. Because we could not obtain any information mentioned the function about the publicly owned land along the Mason River. Without such evidence, we can not accept the commendation that the publicly owned land along the Mason River will make contribution to the river.

In conclusion, the author’s recommendation is not well supported. To bolster it the author must provide better evidence that the resident of Mason River like the water sports as the favorite games. At the same time, the author should introduce several evidences to confirm that the residents seldom use the river for any kind of recreational activity because of the poor quality of the water. And then, we would also need to know the demands of the residents when the river was cleaned up. At last, the author should provide enough information about the relationship between the quality of the water and the improvement of the publicly owned land along the Mason River.