argument203 [奋战August] 第五周作业（3）by hellowyr

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT203 - The following appeared in a newspaper feature story.

"At the small, nonprofit hospital in the town of Saluda, the average length of a patient's stay is two days; at the large, for-profit hospital in the nearby city of Megaville, the average patient stay is six days. Also, the cure rate among patients in the Saluda hospital is about twice that of the Megaville hospital. The Saluda hospital has more employees per patient than the hospital in Megaville, and there are few complaints about service at the local hospital. Such data indicate that treatment in smaller, nonprofit hospitals is more economical and of better quality than treatment in larger, for-profit hospitals."

WORDS: 472          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2007-7-27 22:23:39

In this argument, the arguer asserts that the small nonprofit hospitals are more economical and of better quality than treatment in large, for-profit hospitals. To bolster his conclusion, he cites the comparison between the hospitals in the town of Saluda and the City of Megaville By the data of average stay and the cure rate together with the complaints from patients, the arguer deduces a seemingly reasonable assertion. However, by examining the evidence he renders, I find at least three fallacies as follows.

A plain truth we all admit is that patients go to hospitals with a hope of recovery. For the same illness, can both hospitals of the town and the City provide the same quality? The arguer fails to answer the question while this is just what we want to know first hand, consequently, we deny agreeing with the arguer that the small hospital could bring high quality without evidence. Although maybe the small hospitals demand less for the same illness, what if the patient be sick again because of ineffective cure from small hospitals? The result would be that they have to return to large hospitals to get cured once again so as to recover, as a result, the money spent in the small hospital would be a waste of money in vain.

Second, the data cited in the argument such as the cure rate and the average patient stay is vague and not persuasive. On the one hand, different ailment needs different treatment, small hospitals certainly have limited technique to deal with crucial patients, comparing the stay dates of ailments such as cough and headache cured in the small hospital with that of the bearing of a baby in a large hospital in a City would be meaningless, as a result, the compare of average stay seems meaningless; on the other hand, are there many patients who want to go to small hospitals? If not, the small hospitals receive smaller patients than large hospitals, for example, a small hospital receives 100 patients and cures 60 patients who suffer cold while a large hospital cure 2000 out of 600 patients who suffer crucial illness, we still believe the large hospitals are effective enough to cure people.

Finally, the arguer tells that there is few complaints from small hospital whiles shows no related evidence about the large hospitals. It is quite possible that the large hospital is popular to patients and people have confidence with large hospitals and the large hospitals have been always their first choice ever since.

To sum up, the arguer makes a uncompleted argument because he does not provide an equal comparison between small and large hospitals, at the same time, the investment about the evaluation of large hospitals is not so sufficient enough to give a conclusion. To better convince others, the arguer still has a long way to go to make his argument full-aspect and convincing.

时间这次没够用，而且越写越觉得还很想说，可能中间没有说到点子上，汗。。。

[ 本帖最后由 hellowyr 于 2007-7-27 22:37 编辑 ]