argument57[Jet小组]第二十四次作业

ellefrancaiUID: 2449693

TOPIC: ARGUMENT57 - The following appeared in a newsletter on nutrition and health.

"Although the multimineral Zorba pill was designed as a simple dietary supplement, a study of first-time ulcer patients who took Zorba suggests that Zorba actually helps prevent ulcers. The study showed that only 25 percent of those ulcer patients who took Zorba under a doctor's direction developed new ulcers, compared to a 75 percent recurrence rate among ulcer patients who did not take Zorba. Clearly, then, Zorba will be highly effective in preventing recurrent ulcers and if health experts inform the general public of this fact, many first-time ulcers can be prevented as well."
WORDS: 391          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2008-3-13 1:54:35

The argument appeared in a newsletter on nutrition and health suggests that health experts should inform the general public of the fact that Zorba will be highly effective in preventing recurrent ulcers as well as many first-time ulcers. The conclusion is based on a study of first-time patients who took Zorba. However, this argument is not well illustrated therefore far from convincing for several reasons.

First and foremost, the arguer fails to give persuasive reasons why choosing the multimineral Zorba pill as the study object as well as a kind of medicine. According to the argument, Zorba was designed as a simple dietary supplement instead of a kind of medicine which aims to treat ulcers, that is to say, the possibility of using it as medicine to heal ulcers had been studied and showed to be low. Thus, it is entirely possible that it is not Zobra but some kind of element of it can heal ulcers. At this point, the study should focus on finding the exact element instead of studying Zorba.

Moreover, assuming that Zobra can be used as medicine of ulcers, the arguer still fails to convince me that the study is believable to support his or her conclusion since limited information was provided and the process of illustration is full of logical flaws. The arguer uses vague explanation such as the sentence that a study if first-time ulcer patients who took Zobra suggest that it actually helps prevent ulcers. However, even the total amount of the ulcer patients who has been studied is unknown for us. It is great possible that only four patients took part in the study, which showed no common meanings of the results at all.

Furthermore, the arguer makes mistake on the comparison which aims to show the effectiveness of Zobra's preventing first-time ulcers. However, the comparison is made between two groups of patients about their recurrent ulcers rate, which has nothing to do with the first-time ulcers at all.

In sum, to better illustrate what the arguer suggests, he or she should provided further information about the study such as the amount of the patients, the healing speed of them as well as whether the patients are taking some other methods which may influence the result etc.. Thus, we can conceive the result of the study in order to make further consideration.