Argument126

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Argument126:
"It has long been believed that getting at least eight hours of sleep a night is good for health. But a recent six-year study of adult sleeping habits found that people who reported sleeping eight or more hours a night had a higher rate of certain health problems than did those who reported sleeping seven hours a night. People who reported sleeping five hours a night also had an increased rate of the health problems, but this increase was slight compared to that for people who reported sleeping eight or more hours a night. Clearly, people should try to get seven hours of sleep, and they should worry more about getting too much sleep than too little."
正文：
In this argument the author concludes that people should take seven-hour sleep and should concerned about sleep too much rather than too little. To support this conclusion the author cites a six-year survey of adult sleeping habits which suggest seven-hour sleep cause lower rate of  certain health problems than eight-hour. However, this argument contains several unsubstantiated assumption, which render it unconvincing.

To begin with, the author's conclusion is based on the assumption that the study of adult sleeping habits is statistically reliable. However, the author did not give any further details about the study such as the number of people are surveyed and the number of responses. Perhaps only ten percent people given response, or maybe the amount of people who are questioned cannot constitute a sufficiently large sample. Moreover, the author give no evidence to support that six years is an adequate period for a study like that.

Even if the study is dependable, the author unfairly assume that health problem is due to sleeping habits. Yet, the high rate of health problem  coincides with sleeping too much or too little does not necessarily prove this assumption. There may be other factors that could have contribute to health problem. As we all know, working pressure and irregular eating hours could bring about healthy problems, especially for someone who is lack of regular exericise.

Even assuming that this survey is reasonable and sleeping habits is responsible for health problem, it is unjustly infer that people of different age groups would benefit from the recommendation that people should taking 7-hours sleep as same as adults. For instance, neonates，who are in the period of growth, need to spend more hours in sleeping than adults.

To convince me that people get seven hours of sleep is beneficial, the author should provide more details of the survey and give statistical proofs to substantiate the causal relationship between health problem and sleeping habits. To better asses this argument I would need more information about the influence of sleeping habits to people of different age groups.