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Argument165  第2篇 让砖头来得更猛烈些吧！
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作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户     共用时间：严重超时    570words
从2005年6月24日11时1分到2005年6月24日11时30分
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The following appeared in a business magazine.
'As a result of numerous consumer complaints of dizziness and nausea, Promofoods requested that eight million cans of tuna be returned for testing last year. Promofoods concluded that the cans did not, after all, contain chemicals that posed a health risk. This conclusion is based on the fact that the chemists from Promofoods tested samples of the recalled cans and found that, of the eight chemicals most commonly blamed for causing symptoms of dizziness and nausea, five were not found in any of the tested cans. The chemists did find that the three remaining suspected chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods.'
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In this argument the author concludes that the cans of tuna produced by Promofoods did not contain chemicals that posed a health risk. To support his conclusion he cites the result of tests conducted by the chemists of Promofoods and made some comparison between the cans produced by Promofoods and those produced by other companies. After careful scrutiny, I find this argument flawed in several aspects.

To begin with, the author fails to convince me that the tests are reliable for us to make any further analysis upon it. As mentioned in the argument, the tests are carried out by the chemists from Promofoods and they might have not told the truth in order to save their own reputation and interest. Even provided that these chesmists are honest and indifferent, the result of the tests might lack accuracy because of the ability of the chemists, the level of their experiment facilities and so on. For example, the author gives us no information about how many samples are taken in this test and whether those cans are representative of all the cans of tuna distributed to the market. If the number of the samples is not statistically significant and representative of all the cans produced by the Promofoods, the result is useless.  Without clear evidence that the result is accurate the argument seems unconvincing to me.

Furthermore, the fact that of the eight chemicals most commonly blamed for causing symptoms of dizziness and nausea, five were not found in any of the tested cans lends no strong support to the arguer's conclusion. The author assumes that the symptoms listed in the argument can only be due to the eight chemicals most commonly blamed for causing these symptoms, which is not necessarily the case. The cans produced by the Promofoods might happen to contain some rare ingredients that can cause nausea and dizziness, not to mention there are still three suspected chemicals exist in the cans. Without ruling out this possibility the argument is not persuasive.

What’s more, the fact that the three suspected chemicals found in the cans produced by Promofoods are naturally found in all other canned foods amounts to scant evidence to the author’s conclusion. It is quite possible that the cans of Promofoods significantly larger amount of these chemicals than those from other canned food producers. There is still possibility that these chemicals mixed with certain kind of chemical from tuna would pose a health risk while they are not harmful taken by the consumers separately. These and other possibilities, if true, would serve to refute the arguer’s conclusion.

Finally, the author hastily generalize that the cans produced by Promofood pose no health risk from the test of only two particular health-related symptoms. He ignores numerous other health risks that the cans might potentially cause. Without sufficient and general study of the cans on all of the possible health risks the conclusion seems unsound.

To sum up, the author fails to establish a solid causal relationship between his conclusion and his reasoning. To strengthen this argument he has to provide more e evidence on the reliability of the tests and give more detailed information on how the tests are conducted. I also needed to know the specific result of the amount of the dubious chemicals the cans contains and those of the other canned foods. With those listed above I could better assess the credibility of the argument.   

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[ Last edited by jamesprc on 2005-7-24 at 13:27 ]

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