Argument51 【CSMY作文互改小组】第三组第12次作业

meichengyuUID: 2121098

TOPIC: ARGUMENT51 - The following appeared in a medical newsletter.

"Doctors have long suspected that secondary infections may keep some patients from healing quickly after severe muscle strain. This hypothesis has now been proved by preliminary results of a study of two groups of patients. The first group of patients, all being treated for muscle injuries by Dr. Newland, a doctor who specializes in sports medicine, took antibiotics regularly throughout their treatment. Their recuperation time was, on average, 40 percent quicker than typically expected. Patients in the second group, all being treated by Dr. Alton, a general physician, were given sugar pills, although the patients believed they were taking antibiotics. Their average recuperation time was not significantly reduced. Therefore, all patients who are diagnosed with muscle strain would be well advised to take antibiotics as part of their treatment."
WORDS: 379          TIME: 0:28:35          DATE: 2007-1-30

Citing several unfounded assumptions as well as presenting some dubious evidence and some simple analysis, the arguer asserts that all patients who are diagnosed with muscle strain would be well advised to take antibiotics as part of their treatment. However, we do not have to look very far to see the line of the reasoning suffers from several critic flaws which will be discussed as follows.

To begin with, the arguer fails to establish the causal relationship between using antibiotics and the short recuperation time. With only some information about whether adopting the treatment of antibiotics in the two groups, it is difficult to attribute the short recuperation time only to the using of antibiotics because lacking information was provided about other treatment that may also cause the results for those patients. It is highly possible that in the first group Dr. Newland gave the patients a lot of special medicine different from the second group and it are those special medicine that made the patients cured quicker than others. So, the conclusion from the analysis about the relationship between using antibiotics and quick healing is unconvincing for ignoring the possibilities above by the author.

In addition, another flaw that may also weaken the logic of the argument is that the survey quoted in the argument is much problematic. On one hand, the arguer does not provide some important information such as when was the study conducted, who conducted this study, where did it carry on and how many patients participated in this study. On another hand, the author fails to demonstrate that such study is representative and authoritative enough. It is also possible that the study was run in an extremely small scale by few interning doctors who are not authoritative. In such cases, the study can not present the all patients in other places and the results from the study is unwarranted and useless.

All in all, although the argument seems to be plausible, it is neither sound nor persuasive. The evidence cited in this argument lacks credibility that did not lend strong support to the author's claim. To make it logically acceptable, the arguer should have to provide much more specific evidence concerning the factors about the treatment of two groups with different doctors mentioned above.

[ 本帖最后由 meichengyu 于 2007-1-30 10:02 编辑 ]