同主题 argument200

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200. Statistics collected from dentists indicate that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist. This evidence suggests that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. Thus, dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer and emphasize both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients.


In this argument, the arguer, basing on a assumption that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are, hold a view that dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer and emphasize both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity staff to nervous or suffering patients. At first glance, it may seem reasonable, with careful scrutiny, however, we find the argument relies on a series unproven assumptions and is therefore unconvincing as it stands.

A threshold assumption upon which the view relies is that the possibility of distressing about having dental work of men is larger than that of women. To support this assumption the arguer cited the statistics indicating that three times more men than women are to faint when visiting the dentists, however, the statistics is suspicious due to the absence of the rate of people who feint. Chance is that, the total amount of people of male who go to see dentist is five times more than female. If so, it proves that woman are more likely to feint, which goes in sharp contrast to the arguer’s conclusion.


Consider, for example, the man informants have bad teeth naturally, and the women ones are a group of good teeth owners, or perhaps the former ones suffers from other diseases such as headache which makes them feinted, and the latter ones are in a well health condition. All the possible reasons will make men more likely to feint.  It is entirely possible that man patients suffers other disease which will make them feinted. In lack of additional evidence, we cannot conclude that men are more likely to get distressed than women.

Even if, granted that the rate of man to suffer from dental disease is higher than that of woman, we cannot ensure that the advertise should target the male consumer to attract patients and pay attention to the effectiveness of their techniques and sensitivity of their staff. In case of the majority female dental suffers are willing to stand in stead of see doctors, the advertisement may lose the most part of potential patients. Additional, The sensitivity of the staff and the distress of the patients don not have a causal relationship, a sensitive doctor, facing to the patient, may also get so nervous that he cannot reduce the dental suffers' pain because of his poor technique.

In sum, unless the arguer takes the alternative factors leading to the survey result into consideration, the dentists should emphasize the anesthetic technique and sensitivity to nervous or suffering patients is unwarranted.

[ 本帖最后由 flycc28 于 2006-8-10 23:19 编辑 ]