argument76

hurongchildUID: 2595535

题目：ARGUMENT76 - 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."
字数：496
用时：0:30:00
日期：2010-2-26

This argument makes the conclusion that it appears that Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin and cites a study of consumer responses to this Luxess cream. However, this seemingly sound argument is logically convincing in the following aspects.

The conclusion of this argument is based on a study of consumers responses joined by the volunteers, however, there are some problems with this survey that people need to think about. Is the Luxess face cream truly effective to these volunteers? We have to take two facets into account. Firstly, the description of the study's results is quite ambiguous since it is just a report from the volunteers themselves. These volunteers reported a marked improvement in the way their skin looked and felt. But is there indeed such a marked improvement? Self report is subject, and to a large extent relies on people’s psychological feelings. Perhaps it is just their feelings that their facial skin condition has improved much, while their skin condition is not changed or not changed so much. How much is their facial skin improved than before? Perhaps, a specific comparison between what their facial condition is now and what it was before is more convincing here, instead of a self report. In short, to make the argument more convincing, a more scientific description of the survey results should be provided.

Secondly, even if the survey results are believable-- their facial skin conditional is improved, what is truly effective to make this change possible is questionable. In the study, the volunteers washed their faces every morning with mild soap first and then applied Luxess. It is quite possible that what is effective to bring about a improvement of skin condition is the mild soap, but not the Luxess, since soup also has the function of cleaning face. And in this month, did these volunteers use others things to wash faces and apply other cream at noon and in the evening, or did they not use anything to wash and apply to their face at all? This information should be provided in order to convince people that the truly effective factor here is Luxess.

Even if Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin of these volunteers, whether it is also effective in improving other people's facial condition is doubtful. The argument does not give us any information about these volunteers, including their age, their original facial skin conditions and their living habits. If these volunteers are very young and are all females, then this Luxess cream is useful to this group and we are not sure whether it is useful to other people. Or if they all have the same skin problem, for example, their skin is too dry, then we can only say that the cream is effective to solve this problem, and as to the other problems, further study need to be done. In a word, more information about these volunteers and the effect of the cream need to be given in order to make public readers believe this argument and the effect of the cream.

In conclusion, this argument is unwarranted. The arguer need to provide more information about the study process and the information about these volunteers in order to make the argument more convincing.