ARGUMENT57 [Victors小组]第十次作业 by jennetrj

jennetrjUID: 2275453

ARGUMENT57 - 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."
WORDS: 565         TIME: 00:30:00         

In this argument, the author recommends health experts to inform the effectiveness of taking Zorba, a dietary supplement, to public to prevent first-time ulcers. To justify this recommendation, the author cites a study carried out among ulcer patients, which indicated that ulcer recurrence rate could be decreased by taking Zorba. However, close scrutiny reveals several flaws in it.

To begin with, the information about the study in the passage is too vague to be informative. There's no indication of how many patients were involved in the research and if they could be the representative of the general. It is totally possible that only 20 patients were studied, or patients were not randomly selected into the control group and test group. Maybe those patients who took Zorba were the ones suffering from minor ulcer which made it possible to take medications, while patients in the control group were severe ones that had to undertake the fast policy as part of their treatment. Until the author provides enough data concerning about the reliability of the study, it could not be taken seriously, let alone the conclusion that Zorba is effective in preventing recurrence of ulcer.

Assuming that the study cited in the passage is reliable, the author fails to establish the causal relationship between Zorba intake and less recurrence of ulcer. Perhaps other medications were given to patients with Zorba as the combined treatment, or maybe those patients were exposed to a less irritating environment, like staying at special wards, being immune from that accepted factor that might relate to ulcer. Without eliminating or even consider such possibilities, the author's assumption that Zorba could prevent ulcer recurrence among patient is still open to question.

Granted that Zorba is effective in preventing recurrent ulcers, no warrant could be made that healthy people could get the advantage to avoid first-time ulcers. No evidences provided in the passage support it. Maybe Zorba activates some special elements in patients body which effectively heal the ulcer, but in healthy people such substance is absent thus makes this group of people still be vulnerable to first-time ulcers. Or perhaps recurrent ulcers were greatly related to the deficiency of the element contained in Zorba, while in normal people don't have such risk. Either scenario, if true, would serve to undermine author's hasty allegation that taking Zorba would protect healthy people from first-time ulcers.

Finally, the author overlooks the possible disadvantage that would be induced by taking Zorba. For instance, maybe the element contained in Zorba might be accumulated in human body and over intake might induce intoxication which leads to other diseases, like what Vitamin E does to human if we keep taking this fat-soluble vitamin. Until the author completes the analysis, the recommendation for health experts to inform public to take Zorba is not appropriate.

In sum, the argument is groundless as it stands. To consolidate it, the author should provide more statistical information about the study, such as the number of patients enrolled in the research, to ensure its reliability. In addition, the author should rule out other possible factors that might lead to less occurrence of ulcer among patients, so as to establish the causal relationship between Zorba and low incidence of secondary ulcer. To better assess the argument, we need to know whether the same thing will happen in healthy people after taking this kind of pill for ulcer prevention.