argument105 同主题写作十二越洋农场geniego

geniegoUID: 201395

TOPIC: ARGUMENT105 - The following appeared in a health newsletter.

"According to a recent study, people with many social ties report catching colds less often than do people with few social ties. Consequently, researchers conclude that having an active social life probably helps strengthen the immune system. The researchers note that catching a cold-one of a family of highly contagious viruses-gives the cold-sufferer temporary immunity to that virus in the future, but not to the many other related viruses. Merely being exposed to a new cold virus, however, is not enough for a person to catch a cold, since a strong immune system can successfully fight off some new viruses. Thus, in order to prevent catching a cold, people should strengthen their immune systems by becoming more active socially."

中文提纲：
1 没有确切的证据以证明social ties可以增强身体的的抗力
很有可能是和该study中未涉及的条件有关，而在整个研究中
作者没有提供详实的背景条件。
而且就实际情况而言，更多的communication才可能导致感冒
2．作者有可能因果颠倒，身体健康才有可能交际广泛
   而不是交际广泛才身体健康。
3．Immune system 和catching a cold 是完全不同的概念，应该说
好的immune system 可以减少感冒机会，而并不是增强了immune system可以避免所有的感冒。


WORDS: 490          TIME:   0:50:00          DATE: 2006-8-21

The author illogically concludes from a study that people should become active socially in order to prevent catching a cold. Although it seems true from the process of deducing, in fact , the author provide inadequate evidence which could not afford the causation.

In the evidence provided by the recent study, the causation between catching a cold and more social ties lacks scientific and accurate proof.  It is quite hard to understand such a relationship in which the author did not indicate logical reasons but only conditions in this study and conclusion. It is totally unknown to us the background of the study and other possibilities. We know commonly the differences between social active individual and not social enough individual are often due to their different career, for example scientists and sailors. Maybe in this area, the cold catching ratio has more things to do with the career rather than social ties. And we should consider that more social ties mean more chances to expose highly contagious environment, when communicating with others, it is much more easily to catch a cold.

There is still an obvious flaw in this statement. If people, form now on, become social active, does it mean this individual can have better immune system. Of course not, if the individual already has a bad quality of health or immune system, it would be quite hard to cover by increasing social ties, even reducing his or her health condition. And we could imagine that an individual, with good health condition, will be inclined to communicate with others, consequently obtaining more social ties, while the less healthy would prefer to stay at home. So, maybe, strong immune system leads to more social ties, but not more social ties lead to strong immune system.

Also, even we concede social ties help to strengthen immune system, however, immune system and catching a cold are totally different conceptions. What the author mentions means with strong immune system, people can resist from catching a cold. It is possible, with strong immune system, the individual can be prevented from catching a cold, to some degree, however, catching a cold does not mean weak immune system. Because we all kwon there are many different possibilities to catch a cold such as the situation of the body, the acute changing temperature and the environment. When having a fever, the possibility of catching a cold is quite high no mater the individual has a strong immune system or not. When the temperature changes severely, good immune system becomes weak to resist from catching a cold. So to prevent from catching a cold, we should be much more conscious to more elements not only to strengthen immune system..

All in all, the author fails to provide scientific evidence to prove the conclusion, and more possibly, the arguer misunderstands the cause and effect relationship between social ties and immune system. So what the arguer suggests would be misleading.