Argument51 [越洋农场战队] 第七次作业

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT51 - The following appeared in a medical newsletter.

"Doctors have long suspected that secondary infections may keep some patients from healing quickly after severe muscle strain. This hypothesis has now been proved by preliminary results of a study of two groups of patients. The first group of patients, all being treated for muscle injuries by Dr. Newland, a doctor who specializes in sports medicine, took antibiotics regularly throughout their treatment. Their recuperation time was, on average, 40 percent quicker than typically expected. Patients in the second group, all being treated by Dr. Alton, a general physician, were given sugar pills, although the patients believed they were taking antibiotics. Their average recuperation time was not significantly reduced. Therefore, all patients who are diagnosed with muscle strain would be well advised to take antibiotics as part of their treatment."
WORDS: 516          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2006-7-26

In this argument, the editor conclude that all patients who suffered from muscle strain should take antibiotics as their treatment. To suggest his conclusion, the editor cites a results of study relate to two groups of patients. At first glance, the conclusion based on the study may be sounded or even perfect, but with careful analysis, we could find it suffered from several logical flaws.
The main drawback is that questionable results of the study and can be divided into 5 aspects. First, although all the patients are suffered from same disease----muscle strain, but the editor not inferred any other conditions of all the patients such as age, sex, strength of body, so it may be that some of them have a more poor body condition or some other diseases so the time for resume from the muscle strain will be, lengthen or shorten, interferenced. So until we know all the patients have similar body conditions that not influence the results of the study, it can not make a strong one to suggest the editor's conclusion.
Secondly, the editor mention no words about how many patients have been involved in that study. As the statistic told us, if the number of the patients are not sufficient enough and select randomly, the result will be questionable. And the editor mentioned that 40 persent patients of one group recover quicker than another's, but without the real number of the patients, this result will become meaningless because we do not know exactly how useful this mean would be through the control team.
Thirdly, the editor mentioned, may be careless, the two teams are leaded by different doctors-----one is a general physician. But we still do not know anything about another one. So it is reasonable for us to doubt that may be another doctor is just a common on or have litter experience to physical diseases, or may be Dr. Alton have some special way except the antibiotic pills to help the patient to recover. So, with all the analysis, we could treat this study as a strong one to suggest the editor's conclusion.
Another significant flaw this argument suffered is that just base on the unacceptable result of the study, the editor suggest “all” patients who are diagnosed with muscle strain should use antibiotics for treatments. As we just mentioned above, the result is base on insufficient number of patients, so all the conclusion base on that result is, of course, unreasonable. And it is possible the antibiotics will make some patients get other situation such as allergy-----which is more dangerous than muscle strain. So the editor’s conclusion may be just base on dubious evidence or may be just his own subjective ideas to apply this way to all the other patients.   
All in all, with all the factors we just discussed above, we could find that the editor’s conclusion is a poor one which just base on a dubious study. In order to make the conclusion more reasonable and logical acceptable, the editor should show more details about the study and some other reasons.