argument123 我的第二篇

jj1227UID: 2216517

TOPIC: ARGUMENT123 - The following appeared in a health newsletter.

"Eating a heavy meal may increase the risk of heart attack. A recent survey of 2,000 people who had had a heart attack revealed that 158 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 24 hours before their heart attack, and 25 of them said they had eaten a heavy meal within 2 hours before their heart attack. Eating and digesting food releases hormones into the bloodstream and temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure slightly. Both of these things put stress on the heart. Therefore, people who are at risk of having a heart attack can lower that risk by not overeating."
WORDS: 507          TIME: 00:29:53          DATE: 2009-8-5 23:16:45

The recommendation advanced by the arguer that people who are at risk of having a heart attack should avoid overeating to lower that risk seems to have some merit on the surface. In everyday life, diet is often always mentioned when it comes to heart attack. However, basing on a lame deduction, the arguer draws a wrong recommendation which misses the point of the problem and may mask other causes of heart attack that actually matter.

First of all, the arguer cites a recent survey of 2,000 people who had had a heart attack for substantiation of the recommendation. The survey itself is doubtful in several aspects, let alone the conclusion drawn from it. The sample taken--the 2,000 people is possibly not unrepresentative to reflect the overall population who has a history of heart attack in terms of various physique, different lifestyle and eating habits, diseases and all the other related traits that play a role in causing heart attack. Furthermore, the definition of a "heavy meal" is too vague for the survey to be statistically meaningful as judgment may differentiate significantly among people for their age difference, individual health condition, etc. The heavy meal reported in the survey needs to be clearly defined and precisely measured as much as possible in order to make the survey statistically conclusive and scientifically correct. Lacking all these critical information, the arguer cannot base the conclusion on the survey result.

Recessively, even though the survey might be statistically reliable, the arguer fails to consider all the other factors that may lead to a heart attack. There lacks information about the activities other than having the meal that those people engaged within the 24 hours before their heart attack. Violent sports, for instance, may be the direct cause of their heart attack rather than the meal taken hours ago. Then it is highly possible that the heavy meal eaten may be just an indirect cause--or perhaps even irrelevant to the occurrence of heart attack. For the deficiency of the above information, the survey is not complete enough for the arguer to draw any firm conclusion.

Even if the survey is modified as indicated above, the evidence is still incomplete to be supportive for the deduction reasoned by the arguer. As the arguer states that hormones released into the bloodstream for eating and digesting food "temporarily" increase heart rate and blood pressure "slightly", then there needs more clarification about the rough length of time and the significance of the change. If it turns out that the time span is insignificantly short relative to the time considered or the change is negligibly trivial, then the conclusion is totally nonsense. For the lacks of scientifically specific clarification, the causal relationship between gluttony and heart attacks is groundless.

In conclusion, the recommendation by the arguer is ill conceived on the lame evidence. The information available so far is trivial to bolster any conclusions. To draw an effective recommendation, the arguer has to investigate more to get comprehensive information about the correlation between gluttony and heart attacks.

xiaoxin0740216UID: 2603179

比我写的好啊～你什么时候考啊？

jj1227UID: 2216517

2# xiaoxin0740216
14号。。报名的时候犯糊涂把选择的顺序弄反了。。。
我再想要二战了，不知道这次的成绩不理想有没有什么影响