=七月流火=小组第3次作业 argument167 by kiki

KiKi~淇水滺滺UID: 2679824

Grounding on the three weeks’ study with one group of 30 volunteers, the author accordingly suggests that lavender is able to cure insomnia over a short period of time. However, there are some unreliable details in the statement.

The most important is that it lacks another group of the same people as a comparison. In biology and medical science fields, when they do experiment, they always have another comparison group in order to give a persuasive conclusion. At least, there should be another group of the same amount of people without the lavender-scented pillows to compare with the ones with lavender in this study. Otherwise, the study is not complete to make a conclusion. What’s more, the amount of people is too small for a study in medical science, 3 weeks is too short for a chronic disease like insomnia, the author need further study with more volunteers for a longer time.

Even if the 30 people and 3 weeks are able to make an initial summing-up, there are some confusing details. First, we do not know anything about the usual sleeping medication, maybe it functions in the third week. In this situation, sleeping medication is the reason why the volunteers have a sound sleep. Even they make sure that sleeping medication has no effect in the third week, we cannot find their feelings after they wake up like the feelings in the first and the second week mentioned in the statement. Maybe they feel more tired in the last week. Albeit it is true that they wake up with a good feeling, the author ignores insomnia’s definition at least partly. Usually, insomnia means people are hard getting to sleep. However, the statement does not provide any details about how soon they fell asleep.

In addition, it is controversial about the reason why people have a sound sleep in the third week. We always have experience that if we do not sleep well one night, we sleep soundly the next day. In the statement, we know the volunteers did not sleep well all the second week, I’m sure they were very tired after that. Then this maybe that is why they slept longer and more soundly. And we can also find that the volunteers slept in a controlled room. People feel nervous when they change the environment living in a different place and they need time to adapt. So maybe people acclimated in the third week and that is the reason why they slept well.

To sum up, the statement is not persuasive and more data is needed to collect in the original study. The author also needs to design a more complete experiment to give conclusions.