argument165--有拍必回拍

emteddybearUID: 2699606

165.The following appeared in a business magazine.

"As a result of numerous consumer complaints of dizziness and nausea,
Promofoods requested that eight million cans of tuna be returned for
testing last year. Promofoods concluded that the cans did not, after all,
contain chemicals that posed a health risk. This conclusion is based on
the fact that the chemists from Promofoods tested samples of the recalled
cans and found that, of the eight chemicals most commonly blamed for
causing symptoms of dizziness and nausea, five were not found in any of
the tested cans. The chemists did find that the three remaining suspected
chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods."

去年由于有大量消费者投诉说产生了眩晕和恶心，Promofoods要求800万罐金枪鱼回收检测。Promofoods下结论说这些罐头根本不含任何有健康危害的化学物质。这一结论基于这样的事实，即Promofoods的化学家测试了回收的罐头样本，并发现8种最常见的导致眩晕和恶心症状的化学物质中，有五种都没有在任何被测试的罐头中被发现。化学家确实发现剩下三种受怀疑的化学物质在所有其他罐头食品中都存在。
Analysis:
Conclusion: cans of tuna didn’t contains chemicals that posed a health risk
Evidence: 1.Five of the eight most commonly chemicals blamed for causing symptoms of dizziness and nausea are not found in the tested sample cans.
2. The three remaining suspected chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods.

In this argument, the arguer claims that there is no chemical which will pose a health risk in cans of tuna produced by Promofoods. Based on some chemical examinations on some samples, this claim sounds reasonable, but there are several facets questionable.

Firstly, I would like to examine the representativeness of the tested samples. There is no information about the number of the samples. It is entirely possible that the chemists draw conclusions only testing two or three cans. If so, the result of the chemical examination is unreliable. In addition the author must provide evidence to show that it is random when chose samples. Only when the test is conducted with broad and random samples, does the examination make sense.

Secondly, the chemists only test the existence of the eight most commonly chemicals which would cause the symptoms of dizziness and nausea, what about other less commonly chemicals? Is that because the chemists from Promofoods don't want to examine those chemists on purpose, or because these chemists are not professional at all? It is entirely necessarily to ask the chemists to provide some detailed lists about substances which the cans contain to food safety experts who can diagnose whether there are some substances which would cause a health sick, because what the food safety experts worked cannot be accomplished by chemists.

Thirdly, the argument appears to assume a correlation amounts to a causal relationship. In this argument, the arguer is mistaken to believe that if the three remaining suspected chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods, the cans of tuna is safety. However, the arguer fails to look over some other alternative explanations. For example, it is entirely possible that the contents of those three chemicals in cans of tuna produced by Promofoods exceed the set standards, while the contents of other canned foods do not. Likewise, it is possible that the three chemicals with some substances in tuna will cause some special chemical reaction, and generate harmful substances, while those three chemicals will do nothing with other canned foods.

As it stands, the arguer is not well reasoned. To make it logically acceptable, the arguer would have to demonstrate that the samples are representativeness and the cans of tuna produced by Promofoods don't contains harmful chemicals more very few suspected chemicals don't exceed the set standards.