argument59-超越自我小组

啊拉UID: 2527432

ARGUMENT59 - The following appeared in an article in the health section of a newspaper.

"According to the available medical records, the six worst worldwide flu epidemics during the past 300 years occurred in 1729, 1830, 1918, 1957, 1968, and 1977. These were all years with heavy sunspot activity-that is, years when the Earth received significantly more solar energy than in normal years. People at particular risk for the flu should therefore avoid prolonged exposure to the Sun."

The author of this argument tries to connect the sunspot activity and the world wide flu. Obviously he/she fails to prove the conclusion because I can find some logical problems in this argument.

The conclusion author makes is based on the cause and effect relationship between the sunspot activity and the worldwide flu. But the author only gives us a chain of data which seems more like a coincidence. We cannot draw any conclusion from these data: No evidence shows that the worldwide flu epidemics were caused by the sunspot activity. Perhaps the weather was very bad and cold in these particular years so most of people in the world cannot suffer. So they got cold and it soon became a worldwide flu epidemics. Or it is highly possible that so-called heavy sunspot activity exist in a lot of years besides the 6 years above, and in these years the human beings did not suffer from the flu or other disease. So the cause and effect relationship between the flu epidemics and the sunspot activity is not reliable.

Even if we concede that the sunspots activity is the factor to cause the worldwide flu, the author’s conclusion seems unconvincing. In the author’s opinion, avoid prolonged exposure to the sun can decrease the risk to get flu. But experience tells me that exposure to the sun in a proper period of time can be good for our health. What’s more, the evidence we concede is that sunspots activity can cause the flu. The difference between sun and sunspots activity is tremendous. So maybe not exposure to the sun when the sunspots activity is high is a good choice, but if the sunspots activity is normal or low, these people can still enjoy the sun bath if they like.

In sum, the author of this argument fails to persuade me to believe that people in particular risk of flu should avoid prolonged exposure to the Sun for these logical problems. I suggest he/she to reconsider about the conclusion or change his/her mind after reading this argument.