ARGUMENT242 - The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.
"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year was reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
The argument is well presented, but not thoroughly well reasoned. In this argument, the arguer claims that it is necessary for all the colleges and universities students to adopt to honor codes. The arguer points out that a majority of students consider that less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. In addition, the arguer cites the results of the survey that fourteen cases of cheating in the later 5 years compared with twenty-one cases of cheating in the first years. Close scrutiny reveal, however, that these evidences provide little credible support for the arguer's assertion, which I will explain from several aspects below.
To begin with, a threshold problem with the argument involves the statistical reliability of the survey. The survey is too vague to be informative. The arguer offers on information about the respondent's tendency .For example, maybe the respondents do not support this survey and many cheating affairs not reported. Moreover, we do not know whether the sample survey was representative of the overall group. For this matter, it is impossible to confidently apply the survey's results to that assertion. Lacking information of the randomness of the authority size of the survey sample, the arguer cannot make convincing evidences to base on that survey.
Even assuming that the survey is substantiated enough, the argument remains questionable. The arguer fails to provide the substantial evidence to support the assumption that the cheating among college and university rise dramatically. The arguer ignored other paramount and cardinal respects, such as the number of enrolling about college and university is expanded. Without ruling out this possibility, the arguer's concern about this argument is unfounded.
However, the arguer commits a fallacy "false analogy". The arguer simply assumes that all universities and colleges will carry a similar result for declining of cheating if adopting honor codes, yet, he does not provide any evidence that these are indeed comparable. In fact, difference between the two parts clearly outweighs the similarities. For example, it is entirely possible that some universities and colleges have good moral academic environment and have rare cheating affairs. In this word, they do not need honor codes at all. Even if, on the other hand, adopting this honor codes in some universities and colleges might be fail because it is entirely possible that honor codes might be ignored and students might still cheating. Thus, the arguer cannot rely on this false analogy to bolster his recommendation.
In conclusion, the argument, while it seems logical at first, has several flaws as discusses above. To better assess the argument, it would be useful to know more detail of the survey. To evaluate the arguer’s conclusion more efficiently, we could needs more information to strengthen the conclusion. In a word, without scrutinizing the concrete relationship between cheating and honor codes, this suggestion will not hit the right place in the solution of this problem.