argument200 dentists 状态越来越差了...

lindorUID: 2290025

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: 394          TIME: 0:29:00          DATE: 2007-2-25

In this argument, the arguer concludes dentists should target the male consumer and emphasize both effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients in order to attract patients. Upon close scrutiny, this conclusion is unconvincing because of several critical flaws as follows.

To begin with, the statistics mentioned in this argument is problematic. On the one hand, we are not informed how many dentists have attended in this investigation. If the number of respondents is quite few and, shall we say, no more than 50, the statistics could not be representative of dentists as a whole.  On the other hand, we are no informed whether the statistics are collected by the way of random sampling. If these dentists are come from the same region, or even the same hospital, the result of the statistics could not apply to every dentist everywhere. In short, on the basis of the unreliable statistics, it is arbitrary to draw any conclusion.

Furthermore, even if the statistics is reliable, the arguer makes a further assumption that men are more likely to be distressed when the dental work is done. There is no direct evidence to support this assumption. Perhaps men are so scared of dental surgeon that they faint more frequently and would not be distressed even the dental work is finished. Unless the arguer provides more information of the real situation of men who finished the dental work, I can not accept the assumption.

Additionally, the arguer commits a fallacy of hasty generalization that dentists should target the male consumer to attract patients. It is in all likelihood that the majority of patients are women but men, and women suffers dental problem more times than men, therefore, they would visit dentists much more frequently. On the contrary, men may resist visiting dentists no matter how tempting the advertisement is. If so, the strategy of advertisement which ignore women consumers would be ineffectual to attract more patients, at the even worse, would hurt women consumers' feeling.

Finally, whether the effectiveness of dentists' anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients should be emphasized is open into doubt. There is no evidence to suggest that dentists are lack of those two abilities. Perhaps, the real reason for fainting is not because of the techniques and sensitivity of dentists but of personal psychological dread and intension, which would not be relieved by these techniques and sensitivity. Unless finding out the factual reason of faint, it is presumptuous to firmly draw the conclusion that anesthetic techniques and sensitivity to nervous is essential for male consumers and need to put high emphasis on.

To sum up, the conclusion reached in this argument lacks credibility since the evidence it cites does not lend strong support to it. To bolster this conclusion, the arguer should provide sufficient information on the statistics of dentists. In addition, it is wiser for the arguer to find the real reason of faint before making any suggestion.