【题目】The following appeared as part of an article in a health and beauty magazine.
"A group of volunteers participated in a study of consumer responses to the new Luxess face cream. Every morning for a month, they washed their faces with mild soap and then applied Luxess. At the end of that month, most volunteers reported a marked improvement in the way their skin looked and felt. Thus it appears that Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin
In this argument, the arguer claims that the new Luxess face cream has a truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin. To substrate the conclusion, the author provides the evidence that some volunteers used mild soap and the Luxess per day during one month and then they reported that their skin looked and felt better. The arguer suffers from several critical fallacies.
First of all, the survey's information is too vague to convince us the author's conclusion. The arguer fails to give us the information of those volunteers, such as their age, their gender and so on. What we should pay attention to is except the mild soap and Luxess did the volunteers use other brand face cream or soap. A result without enough volunteers and strict limitations cannot convince consumers to believe its true effect. It is entirely possible that the volunteers use another brand face cream except the Luxess. So the effect maybe was not resulted form the Luxess, but the other face creams. The author's failure to rule out other possibilities for the improving effect of the Luxess renders the conclusion based upon it highly suspect.
Even if those volunteers only use the mild soap and the Luxess face cream, it is still suspicious that the improved skin condition was induced by the Luxess. It is also possible that the mild soap is so good and with a high quality to improve people's skin health. Another important thing is that the author only use one month to get the conclusion. In such a little time, the side effects maybe have not turn out. It is impossible to affirm the true effect of the Luxess face cream without excluding the possibility that side effects maybe turn out.
Last but not the least, the author draw the conclusion only by the subjectivity standard such as the volunteers’ skin looked and felt in good way. It is difficult for us to believe that the true effect of Luxess without the objective standards such as the photos which were token before and after using Luxess, the samples of skin cells which were from volunteers, the alleviation of circle around eyes and so on.. Only with scientific proof we could believe the conclusion.
In sum, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence cited in analysis does not lend strong support to what the arguer claims. To make the argument more convincing, the arguer should provide more information about the experiments and waiting longer to watch the side effects’ happening. Additionally, the arguer must provide more objective standards to evaluate the conclusion.