[a习作temp] argument76 12月高强组第四次作业 [复制链接]

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电梯直达

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发表于 2006-12-12 08:15:38 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

题目：ARGUMENT 76 - The following appeared as part of an article in a health and beauty magazine.

"A group of volunteers participated in a study of consumer responses to the new Luxess face cream. Every morning for a month, they washed their faces with mild soap and then applied Luxess. At the end of that month, most volunteers reported a marked improvement in the way their skin looked and felt. Thus it appears that Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin."
字数：661 用时：45 日期：2006-12-10

In this argument, the speaker concludes that Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin. To support his conclusion, the speaker cites result of a study in which a group of volunteers participating reported a marked improvement in the way their skin looked and felt. However, a close examination of this argument would reveal how groundless the conclusion is.

Firstly, from the study quoted in the argument, we find no sign of such procedures for random sampling, and have good reason to doubt if the sample is representative enough to reflect general skin conditions of all people as whole. It is possible that the number of volunteers is as small as 5 and all the 5 volunteers have only one kind of similar skin problem which can be ameliorated by Luxses while this scream have no impact on other kinds of skin . There is also no information about the skin condition about these volunteers before use of the face cream. We have no concrete standard to compare the volunteers' actual skin condition now and before. Therefore, unless the speaker provides enough evidences to support the reliability of this study, the responses of consumers from it is open to doubt.

Secondly, the information about the particulars of procedures of the study is too vague to be substantive. First, the speaker tells nothing about features of the soap. Either the possibility that the mild soap they used with the face cream may have specific function as softening or smoothing people's skin or that some element in the soap can promote the efficacy of the face cream will weaken the conclusion that the face cream is effective. Secondly, we also do not know the climate condition about the place where the experiment is carried out. If the climate is mild in this place, the improvement of volunteers' skin may be attributed to the moderate weather condition but the face cream. In addition, do these volunteers use face cream of other brands? Or do they eat some food beneficial to their skin such as milk or egg during the time? If so, then, use of face cream does not necessarily account for the better skin condition. Consequently, since no effort was made to glean information about details in the study, the possibility cannot be excluded that other factors rather than the face cream have the positive impact on the skin.

Thirdly, the speaker presents a vague and uninformative description about the result of the study which makes his conclusion unconvincing. On the one hand, no concrete statistics about the number of how exactly many consumers take part in the study and how many of them feel good about the cream are given. Only an imprecise expression that most people feel good about the cream lends no support to the argument. On the other hand, subjective feeling of the users can not be equated with the objective and confirmed effects. Perhaps, the volunteers' positive feeling of the cream is due to pure psychological factor because they take the illusion that new product is surely of high efficiency for granted. Or perhaps the volunteers who are not satisfactory with the cream are reluctant to report their true feeling. As result of that, lacking scientific standards to identify users’ actual skin condition, it is presumptuous to assert the better condition of users in this study.

Finally, the time took by the study is too short to testify the verification of the result. What if the effect of the cream can only last for one month or if some negative effects have no chance to emerge in such limited time, even if the facial skin condition of these users does improve in this month, it is still possible that Luxess skin can not bring true improvement to the condition of facial skin.

Since the author commits the above mentioned logical mistakes and fails to consider the whole situation comprehensively, his conclusion should not be adopted.