Argument57 [Victors小组]第十一周作业 by solartorch

solartorchUID: 2244205

57The 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."

1，        study不一定可靠
2，        first-time ulcer patients 不代表整个patients人群
3，        first-time 与recurrent是两个完全不同的概念

WORDS: 505         

While it seems true that the facts presented in the above newsletter contributes to the conclusion that Zorba will be highly effective in both recurrent and first-time ulcers, the evidence and reasoning provided by the author are indefensible under serious scrutiny---mainly in three respects.

To begin with, the study result is dubious and cannot powerfully support the function of Zorba among those first-time ulcer patients. The author fails to provide some more detailed background of this study---such as whether the patients under study were all treated the same except for taking Zorba, or whether the self-conditions are all the same or randomly distributed between those two groups of patients mentioned above. Without the basic information like these, it is entirely possible that the health conditions of those who took Zorba in this study are better than those who didn't in the first place. Or perhaps the treatments upon these two groups of patients are different. Patients who took Zorba under a doctor's direction were received other more helpful remedies. It is these non-mentioned remedies that prevented patients from recurrent but not Zorba. Either of these scenarios, if true, will render the result of study suspect.

In addition, even if we accept the result that Zorba did prevent patients under study from recurrence. We nevertheless should notice that those people mentioned above are all first-time ulcer patients. It is highly questioned for the author to equalize the concept of first-time patients with utterly all the patients. Maybe Zorba is functioned only to the newly developed ulcers for the first time. Maybe the theories behind the restoration of first-time development and the following development of ulcer are extremely discrepant. In that matter, we are reasonable to claim that Zorba will only effectively work for the first-time patients but not all the populations suffered from this disease. Without ruling out these possibilities or even failing to consider them, the author's conclusion is dubious at best.

Lastly, the conclusion that Zorba is able to prevent first-time ulcers is ungrounded without necessary evidence and convincing reasoning. The study result furnished by the author only concerns with Zorba's function on preventing recurrent. There is no place in the above newsletter metioned about the prevention of the first-time ulcers. It is totally possible that the function of Zorba is to act with some virus within ulcer disease in order to achieve immunity. In that matter, Zorba will lose its value under the condition that ulcer has not even been developed yet. Although maybe Zorba will be highly effective in preventing recurrent ulcers, the inference that it can hence prevent the first-time ulcers is lacking of evidence and makes the conclusion ridiculous.

In conclusion, the author not only logically unsounded but also relies on some doubtful assumptions and premises. To fully convince me, the author should provide more details on the background of that study and more concrete information as well as some necessary reserch on the function of Zorba and ulcer. Otherwise the conclusion is scant of relation with that dubious study result at best.

[ 本帖最后由 solartorch 于 2007-6-23 16:12 编辑 ]