Argument200 欢迎来拍，留链必回

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT200 - 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.
WORDS: 411          TIME: 0:27:00          DATE: 2007-2-24
限时失败…… 写完后未计总单词数，兰色部分为超时……
唉，怎么可以在AW时发呆呢！！！

In the argument presented above, the arguer recommends that dentists aimed at attacting patients target the male consumer and emphasize the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients. To support the recommendation, the arguer points out the fact that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist. In addition, the arguer reasons that the evidence implies that men are more inclined to be distressed than women when visiting dentist. However, close scrutiny of the evidence and the arguer's line of reasoning reveals that the argument suffers from several logical fallacies as it stands.

First and foremost, the recommendation reached by the arguer is merely based on the statistics collected from dentists. However, the arguer fails to describe the statistics in details. For example, the arguer fails to point out how many patients are involved in the statistics and whether conditions of these patients are representative of that of all the patients visiting the dentist as a whole. Without further evidence and information on the statistics, it is all likely that the patients from whom the statistics are drawn are only a small percentage compared to the patients who visit the dentists. If this is the case, then the arguer's recommendation is unconvincing to persuade the dentists to follow the recommendation.

Secondly, the arguer fails to provide evidence on the degrees of their problems with teeth, so that we cannot rely on the fact that more men than women faint while visiting the dentists to draw any conclusion that men are more distressed while having dental work done than women are. For one thing, it is possible that men involved in the statistics are suffering from more serious dental problems while women are not. For another, perhaps women are afraid of visiting dentist, which give rise to the fact that less women faint while visiting the dentist. If either of stated above is the case, then the arguer cannot convince me that the argument is well-reasoned.

Last but not least, the arguer recommends dentist should target the male consumer, while unfairly overlooks that maybe dentist target the females who are too afraid to go to a dentist can help to make a profit. Besides, the arguer assumes that both the effectiveness of anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of staff to nervous or suffering patients can help to alleviate the distress suffered by the patients which is unsubstantiated by the argument.

To sum up, the recommendation is rendered as indefensible, at least based on the argument. To bolster the argument, the arguer needs to provide more convincing evidence that men are actually more distressed than women, and that targeting the male patients can be more profitable than targeting female patients. To better assess the argument, it would be helpful to know what percentage of women suffered from dental problems choose not to visit dentists.