argument200 为我所用第十二次作业

jenniferganUID: 2443583

TOPIC: ARGUMENT200 - Statistics collected from dentists indicate that three times more men than women faint while visiting the dentist. This evidence suggests that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. Thus, dentists who advertise to attract patients should target the male consumer and emphasize both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients.
WORDS: 565          TIME: 00:29:49          DATE: 2008-4-8 11:04:30

According to the argument, the author concludes that dentists's advertisements should target at male consumers and emphasize the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients merely because statistics suggests that men are more likely to faint than women when they go to the dentists. However, in my point of view, the auhoer neglect several alternative explanations. A careful examination of the argument will reveal how groundless it is. I will discuss them in turn.

To begin with, the author shows little evidence to show that the statistics is convincing. Firstly, the statistic study does not mention the data is from which dentists. If the statistics comes from the dentists whose patients are almost males, the result cannot be representative. As we know, more male patients, more possibility that they faint because the dentists have no chance to see women faint during the operation due to they have only a few or even not female patients. Secondly, the author does not provide any information of their teeth disease. Perhaps the men consumers' disease are more serious than the women's. For example, men consumers have to get rid of their teeth, but women consumers often go to the dentist washing their teeth which is not hurt at all. Thirdly, the author does not rule out the possibility that women patients have eat some anesthetic medicine before they go to dentists because they don't want to faint in the dentists. In short, the statistics is not believable with so many possibilities I discussed above.

In addition, even the statistics is right, I cannot get to the conclusion that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. Faint maybe is one of the signs of distress, however, there are many other signs indicate distress. Perhaps women show other kind of distress like shake, feel cold and the like. The statistics do not mention about the performance of women, maybe they are more cautious about dental work. So, mere fact only men faint when visiting the dentist without any information about women cannot get to the conclusion.

Moreover, even men are truly more likely to be distressed about dental work, there is of no indication that dentists advertisement should target at male consumers. As the female consumer is less than male consumers, the dentists should advertise target at women to attract the potential consumers adversely.

Furthermore, even the advertisement is paying more attention on male patients, there is no evidence to demonstrate that it should emphasize the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques. Perhaps many patients do not want to be anesthetized because they fear the side effect of such techniques. What's more, the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients cannot be the factor of attracting patients because the author does not offer any information that patients care about the serve of their staff, maybe what they care is the skill of the dentist. So, the dentist should reconsider the advertisement, too.

To sum up, the argument is well-presented, but not thoroughly well-reasoned. To strengthen it, the author should give more detailed information about the statistic study and rule out all the alternative explanations. And, he or she must do some research about the signs of women's distress. Finally, he should think more about the advertisement in order to attract more consumers.