题目：ARGUMENT35 - The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia.
"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 for foods. With this new use for salicylates, we can expect a continued steady decline in the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia."
字数：534
用时：00:35:00
日期：2009-8-7 17:29:20
The conclusion endorsed in the argument is that the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia will decrease with a new use of salicylates, and several evidences are offered in order to justify the conclusion. Firstly, the author contends that salicylated are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Secondly, the author provides the reason that salicylates have been adding to food as preservatives by food-processing companies, and was shown to correlate with a steady decline in the average number of headache reported by a twenty-year study.
Besides, the author mentions that salicylated can also be used as flavor additives for foods. However, the argument relies on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions, which render it unconvincing as it stands.
To begin with, the threshold problem is, the author, ignoring a series of fundamental disparity between salicylates and aspirin, arbitrarily assuming that salicylated can treat headaches as aspirin as they are in the same chemical family. It is likely that salicylated can never cure the headache and even do harm to people. Thus , the distinctions between these two medicines may conspiciously outweight the similarities, making the conclusion of this argument considerably untenable,
In a second place, the problem with the author involves the statistically reliability of the study, the author provides no evidence that the number of the people they studied is statistically significant or that they were representative of people who had headaches in general. Perhaps the sample size was just twenty but there are 20000 headache patients around the country, the conclusion of the study is doubtful. Since lacking enough information about the randomness, statistical, methodological, and size of the study's sample, the author cannot make a convincing conclusion based on that study.
In a third place, even assuming that the result of the study is right, the author unfairly deems salicylates as the only reason leading to the decrease in the number of headaches, and he fails to take into account other possible factors. It is likely that people who participated in the study will get a mount of money which lightened their pressure on working, so they felt happier and never felt headache again. Accordingly, unless the other possible reasons, such as the factors mentioned above, have been scrutinized and eliminated by the author, the caused relationship between salicylates and headache is completely incredible.
Finally, the author’s solution rests on the assumption that salicylates added in food is sufficient to meet the designed target. However, he pays no attention on other factors, which can cause the headache, such as the sense of humor, the method to lighten pressure and the quality of the air. Thus it is highly doubtful that salicylates alone can attain the objective mentioned in the conclusion.
In sum, the argument of the author is not persuasive as it stands and it is incautious for the author to expect a continued decline in the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia. Therefore, to bolster the conclusion, the author should provide concrete evidence and demonstrate that salicylates can treat headaches, and there are no effects can cause headache will happen in Mentia in the future. 作者: yuyan890619 时间: 2009-8-7 19:41:49