argument57 决战830拍砖组tm 作业

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57.The following appeared in a newsletter on nutrition and health.

"Although the multimineral Zorba pill was designed as a simple dietary supplement, a study of first-time ulcer patients who took Zorba suggests that Zorba actually helps prevent ulcers. The study showed that only 25 percent of those ulcer patients who took Zorba under a doctor's direction developed new ulcers, compared to a 75 percent recurrence rate among ulcer patients who did not take Zorba. Clearly, then, Zorba will be highly effective in preventing recurrent ulcers and if health experts inform the general public of this fact, many first-time ulcers can be prevented as well."


1.没有说明是服用了Zorba导致了复发ulcer的减少，可能有别的原因，可能是服从了医生的指导的结果
2.没有信息表明初次得ulcer的病人也会有这样的效果
3.其他因素：没有提供study的相似信息，病人的信息；没有说明Zorba是否有副作用



The newsletter suggested that those first-time ulcers could be prevented since Zorba had effective in preventing recurrent ulcers. To substantiate the conclusion, the author gave out the study which showed only 25 percent of ulcer patients suffered from ulcers again after taking in Zorba. As it stands, I find several logical fallacies showed as follows.

First of all, the evidence the author provided doesn’t suffice to the result drawn from it. Although it’s true that the first-time ulcer patients who took Zorba have been cured, it doesn’t necessarily prove that Zorba is the element mainly responsible for the results. It is highly possible that other factors but Zobar’s effects that cure patients’ illness. Maybe those first-time suffers are so nervous about their illness so that they will pay more attention to their health, for example, to balance the nutrition, to resist eating something that is bad for curing the illness, etc. Lacking evidence that links such illness to the effect of Zorba, it is presumptuous to suggest that Zorba can actually help prevent ulcers.

Secondly, the survey the author provided is statistically unreliable. Concerning the survey, the author failed to give out the number of people surveyed, only the portion. Maybe only 50 people attended the survey that appeared to be too small to evince its fairness and validity. Otherwise, given a lot of patients attended, I still have a many questions. Were they chosen for the survey randomly? Did they volunteer for the survey or could they really be representative of the overall patients? As it stands, the evidence is far too vague to be informative.

Last but not least, even if the statistic is reliable, the author hadn’t given out the reasons why those 25% of ulcer patients who took Zorba would suffer from that illness again? Probably, the medicine itself has the side effects to some patients. If this assumption proves to be true, then those kinds of patients still can’t be cured no matter it is the first time or the reoccurrence for them.

In summary, the author’s suggestion is not so persuasive as it stands. To make it more convincing, the author should provide us with the detailed information about the survey and the medicine itself. (371 words)

累坏了,超时了!

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-17 at 01:39 ]