Arg 167(薰衣草） 欢迎大家拍转

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• 167.  A folk remedy* for insomnia, the scent香味 in lavender flowers, has now
  been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic
  insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a
  controlled room where their sleep was monitored. During the first week,
  volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept
  soundly but wakened feeling tired. During the second week, the volunteers
  discontinued their medication. As a result, they slept less soundly than
  the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the
  volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks.
  This shows that over a short period of time lavender cures insomnia.
    A folk remedy is usually a plant-based form of treatment common to
  traditional forms of medicine, ones that developed before the advent of
  modern medical services and technology.

    In this argument, the researchers advocate that lavender can cures insomnia over a short period of time. The recommendation is based on a three weeks experiment in which reserchers monitored the effect of lavender on 30 volunteers all of whom have suffered the chronic insomnia. At first glance, the argument appears to be somehow plausible, but further reflection reveals that it suffers from at least three logic flaws.
    First of all, the reseachers commit a fallacy of misapplied generalization in assuming that only by experimenting on a single group would automatically lead to the conclusion that lavender can cures insomina. Common sense tells us that patients are prone to the doctor's indication even if the medications they take are actually useless. Thus in order to eliminate this kinds of effect reseachers need to provide a comparative experiment. In it the volunteers would only receive doctor’s indication instead of taking medicine. The reseachers' failure to investigate or even consider the comparative experiment render the conclusion based upon it highly suspect.
    In addition, even if the process of the experiment is reliable, lacking the data about test subjects's sleeping situations prior to the experiment, it is also impossible to draw any convincing conclusion about the relationship between the real effect of the folk remedy and the expriement. Perhaps the volunteers had a long time lacking of sleeping before the experiment. So they would make up for sleep they lost in the previous weeks.
    Finally, the reseachers suffer from a fallacy of"All things are constant". They assumes without justification that the background conditions had remained the same in the three weeks' experiment. We don't know whether the conditions had changed. It is possible that in the first week the 30 volunteers were slept in a spacious room with air condition. So they slept soundly due to the good sleeping enviornment. However the next week all of them were ordered to pack into small room without air condition and stayed overnights. Thus they would felt tired in the mornings. Without considering and ruling out these and other possible stiuation mentioned above, the study can not confidently conclude that it is lavender other than else that lead to the volunteers slept better.
    In sum, the reseachers fail to validate the conclusion that over a short period of time lavender can cures insomnia. To solidify the experiment, the reseachers should provide a comparative experiment to prove that doctor's attitude would not influence volunteers' state of sleeping. Besides, they would have to exclude the abovementioned possibilties that would undermine the study.