达人 2.9 A200 （412）(球拍！！)

daidarenUID: 2354215

TOPIC: ARGUMENT200 - Statistics collected from dentists indicate that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist. This evidence suggests that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. Thus, dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer and emphasize both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients.
WORDS: 410
TIME: 00:30:00+


DATE: 2010-2-9 11:14:35

In this argument, the author presented that dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer and should emphasize both anesthetic techniques and sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients. To sustain it, he shows a survey that indicates men are more likely to faint while visiting the dentist than women. But I find the argument problematic in several respects.

First and foremost, it may be not the case as the author's conclusion that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women just resulted from the statistics that collected from dentists. In the first place, it is possible that males are much more than females among these patients, and even though the number of male patients who fainted is more than female's is not equal to the percentage of the males and females patients who fainted. That means the author could not conclude any result that men are easier to be distressed than women.

Secondly, the author unfairly equals faint to distress, but no evidence could strengthen this. There is a possibility that women who visit the dentist are with more slightly dental disease, while men visit dentist only when they are with heavily dental disease. And it is also possible that the ways to explain distress are different between men and women, as a result, women may scream or by some other means to release the distress Thus, the statistics showed by the author means nothing until the author ruling out the conditions of their patients.

Last but not least, the author commits a hasty generalization that dentists should target male consumers rather than female consumers. As no evidence indicates that targeting male consumers could raise the number of male patients, there may be a risk to do this since there is a possibility to loss female consumers since they are not attention paid before. Thus the whole profit of the hospital may decrease. And if the male consumers are much more than female consumers, then it would be thought twice that if there exists an effective way to enlarge male patients.

In sum, the argument is not persuasive as it stands. To make it more convincing, the author should present more evidence to show the correlation between faint and distress, show the conditions of every patient, tell us the number of male and female they have and research what exactly would attract the patients to have a visiting.