argument137 [kb9.11]第十一次作业

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In this argument, the author suggest Mason City council to increase its budget for improvements to the public owned lands along the Mason River based on the assumption that the river is going to be cleaned and thereby recreational use of the river is likely to increase. At first glance, this suggestion seems to be persuasive, but close inspection one would see that more research need to support this suggestion.

A threshold problem with this argument involves the survey itself. The editorial provides no evidence that the number of responses is statistically significant or that the responses were representative of the region's residents in Mason City in general. It is entirely possible that the survey is conducted near a swimming pool and people there are more inclined to take water sports. Or perhaps people who would like to provide response is those care about water sports, whereas other people who don't care about water sport do not like to spend any time to response the survey. Without more detailed information about the survey, the author's any suggestion based on it is not convincing at all.

Another problem with the argument is that the editorial unjustifiably assumes that the reason for the residents refusing to have recreation on the river is the low quality of the water. Yet, it does not establish any causal-and-effect relationship between them. While unclean water might be one of the explanations, it does exist other reasons. It is entirely possible that the flow of the river is too rapid to allow people have any recreational activity safely. Or perhaps it lives a kind of dangers animal such as Sharps that always put people's life in danger along the river. Without considering and ruling out other alternatives, the editorial's cannot attribute the lack of recreational activities only to the quality of water.

Even if the unclean water does account for the scarcity of recreational activity, this argument also suffers several critical fallacies in its conclusion. First, the plan announced by the agency of the river does not necessarily ensure turning the water into clean. Perhaps there are several outlets along the river from which constantly pouring out pollution water from factory nearby the region, then it cost little time for the river go back its dirty condition after being cleaned. Secondly, the editorial does not provide any information to suggest the necessity to increase the budget for the public own lands along the river. Perhaps the budget has already been enough to support the improvement along the river. Lacking evidence to support either of these facts, the suggestion is dubious at best.

In sum, the editorial is not logically presented. To strengthen the conclusion, the author need to find out the reason that lead people avoid to have water sport along the river and demonstrate that the plan to clean up the river will be effective. Furthermore, the author also must provide the detail information about the need in budget of the public owned lands along the river. Lack such evidences mentioned above, the suggestion is highly likely to be rejected by Mason City council.