Argument53 Ares第四次作业

gamblerboUID: 2212217

Argument53:
Thirteen years ago, researchers studied a group of 25 infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli such as an unusual odor or a tape recording of an unknown voice. They discovered that these infants were more likely than other infants to have been conceived in early autumn, a time when their mothers' production of melatonin-a hormone known to affect some brain functions-would naturally increase in response to decreased daylight. In a follow-up study conducted earlier this year, more than half of these children-now teenagers-who had shown signs of distress identified themselves as shy. Clearly, increased levels of melatonin before birth cause shyness during infancy and this shyness continues into later life.


Syllabus:
1. study
2. The arguer fails to establish a causal relationship between A and B. --- shyness during infancy
3. the follow-up study --- shyness in later life


Exercise :

In this argument, the claim that increased levels of melatonin before birth cause shyness during infancy and later life sounds very reasonable. After all, to substantiate the conclusion, the arguer does offer the result of a study about infants and its follow-up study. However, several important concerns, such as the specific detail of the study and the real relationship between the increase in melatonin and shyness, which the arguer fails to address in the analysis, undermine the line of reasoning and weaken the argument.

First of all, the arguer ignores several specific details about the study so that the reliability of it is open to doubt. There is no information about how the study was conducted. Without the number of infants studied, it is logically unsounded to assess the validity of the study. For example, if the number of infants studied is only thirty and twenty-five infants of them show signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli, then it is impossible to draw any firm and useful results. Therefore, the arguer

Secondly, another problem with this argument is that even assuming that the study is entirely reliable, the arguer fails to establish a causal relationship between increased levels of melatonin and signs of mild stress in the infants only because of the fact that these infants who showed signs of mild distress when exposed to unfamiliar stimuli were more conceived in early autumn, a time when their mothers' production of melatonin would naturally increase in response to decreased daylight.  It is entirely likely that it is other hormones but not melatonin that leads to signs of mild distress. Of course, it is also possible that some hormones as well as melatonin interact together and thus result in signs of mild distress.

Thirdly, even if there is a causal relationship between increased levels of melatonin and signs of mild stress in the infants, the arguer fails to provide sufficient evidence to support the causal relationship between signs of mild stress and shyness. It is entirely possible that it is everyone's natural response to show signs of mild distress under unfamiliar stimuli. For example, if all of infants exposed to unfamiliar stimuli show some signs of mild distress, it is unfounded to identify them as shyness. In other words, before providing more important and sufficient evidence, the arguer fails to convince us that there is a causal relationship between signs of mild stress and shyness.

Last but not least, the arguer fails to take into account several other factors that might weaken the reasoning in this argument. For one thing, the arguer ignores several other reasons that might have caused shyness in the surveyed infants, such as the gene from their parents. For another, the arguer fails to rule out some other factors that might have caused shyness during later life, such as social environment in which the infants were brought up and the education in school which mainly leads to form people's belief and value.

To sum up, the analysis is greatly undermined by insufficient evidence, its illogical reasoning. In order to better evaluate the argument, it would be necessary for the arguer to get the detailed of the study and rule out all above-mentioned possibilities at least.

//539 word.
//About an hour and half
//difficulty: words and thought!!
// note: the words underlined which are wrong at first are corrected by myself.
// goal: quickly and deep!!

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