argument 158彼岸小组第8次作业 by McNeil

McNeilUID: 2272415

Based on the study and deduction, the author concludes that they have no need to restrict the size of garbage sites in their state or to place any restrictions on the number of homes built near the sites, since the current system of garbage sites does not pose a significant health hazard. On the surface, the conclusion seems plausible. However, further reflection will reveal how groundless the argument is.

A threshold problem with the argument includes the statistical reliability of the study. The author fails to provide evidence that the number of the garbage sites studied is statistical significant, or the sites surveyed can be representative of all the sites as a whole. Lacking the information about the randomness of the sites and the amount of them, the author cannot draw any firm conclusion based on the study.

In addition, the author assumes that no correlation between the size of the garbage sites and people's health equals to not existing correlation. However, the author fails to provide evidence that this is the case. The author's evidence that people living near the largest trash sites had a slightly higher incidence of the rashes may lend support to refute the author's assumption. It is entirely possible that these people also have some other serious disease worse than people live in other place. Therefore, the author cannot convince us that they have no need to restrict the size of the garbage sits.

Furthermore, even assuming that the study is statistical reliable, the author unfairly assumes that the proximity of homes to garbage sites has little influence on the people's health. The fact that only a small statistical correlation between the proximity of homes to garbage sites and the incidence of unexplained rashes among people living in these homes cannot infer that the garbage sites should not be responsible for the health of people nearby. In fact, the study solely mentions the incidence of unexplained rashes instead of considering other some factors. It is highly possible that these people live near the garbage sites have some other health problems, like flu, asthma or something else. Without considering and eliminating possibilities, the conclusion that garbage sites have little bearing on the weak health of people nearby is dubious.

Last but not least, even though the certain size of garbage sites exert less influence on people’s health right now, there is no guarantee that they will not be harmful to people’s health in the future and the scale of garbage sites should have no limitation. Common sense tells us that the garbage sits are the place where various bacteria are favor to multiply. If people live near the sites for a long time, they are vulnerable to suffer from serious disease after a period of time. Also, there exited a threshold problem in the author’s conclusion. The health condition of the residents around the garbage sites might be deteriorated badly once the garbage size exceeds the threshold. Thus the author’s recommendation that they need not to restrict people live near the garbage sites is unjustifiable.

In summary, the argument rests on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions, and is therefore unpersuasive as it stands. Before the final decision made, the author should collect more information of the people's health problems that live near the garbage sites, and the influence of the size of the garbage sites to people's health.