Argument200 永不言弃第十七次作业 by stgzhao 7#

stgzhaoUID: 2583165

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: 456          TIME: 00:22:25          DATE: 2009-2-23 23:26:22

This argument is well-represented, however, not well-reasoned. There several intermediate steps that one can take before making the conclusion that 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. The argument is mainly based on the statistic which indicates that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist. I find several logical flaws as discussed below.
To begin with, the argument fails to provide evidence that the fact that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist can lead directly to the conclusion that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. The situation that men are congenitally less tolerated all kinds of pain than women do, not only pain caused by dental work as the argument states. Therefore the argument partially draws the conclusion that it is dental work that men are more likely to be distressed about having than women are.
One of the most important conclusions of the argument is that the dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer. However, this conclusion is extremist because that it completely ignore the great market of female patients. Every thoughtful man will consider the point that only male market is important to be ridiculous. No evidence has ever been put forward by any agency which shows that male market has more potential than female market. Hence I will not be persuaded by this conclusion.
In addition, the conclusion that advertising should focus more on the effectiveness of the dentists' anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of the staff to nervous or suffering patients seems under question as well. After all when people go to see dentist the most thing they concern about is the professional skill of the dentist instead of anesthetic techniques or something else. Admittedly anesthetic is a important part of a dentist's professional skills, which, however, is not of the greatest importance. Emphasizing too much on such things may deliver a fall information that the dentist's skill is so poor that he needs better anesthetic skill to cover it to the audience - a contrary effect!
In sum, I will not be convinced for the conclusion that dentist should advertise targeting the male consumer and emphasize both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients by the reasons stated in the argument. To better evaluate the argument I need to know whether people consider the anesthetic skill to be the most important for a dentist and if men market is greatly larger than the women market.