argument200

Ocean~SprayUID: 2847693

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: 419
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010-7-28 11:58:33

The argument advises that if dentists want to attract patients, they should target the male consumer, and lay emphasis on both the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous of suffering patients. However, the argument is logically problematic in several aspects.

The threshold mistake involves the statistics collects from dentists. Since we are not informed of who, how many, when the patients have visited, we can not too harshly jump to the conclusion based on the statistics collected merely by dentists themselves. It is entirely possible that some dentists have some regular dentists so the total number of the men and women can be insufficient to be representative of the true condition of faint rate of men and women. The fewer patients taken into account, the less representative the statistics can be.

Furthermore, even if there are three times more men than women who faint while visiting the dentist, it does not necessarily indicate that men are more likely to be distressed about having dental work done than women are. There are other possibilities, such as that women are distressed if not more, at least equally serious than men seeing the dentists, but they express their anxiety and depression in other ways except faint. What's more, it is also possible that women are so scared of visiting the dentists that they would rather endure the tooth problems than counseling the dentist. Without eliminating alternative explanations, the argument is unconvincing as it stands.

The third mistake involves the assertion that since men fear visiting dentists more than women, in order to attract more patients, the dentist should target the male consumer and emphasize the anesthetic techniques effectiveness and sensitivity to nervousness of patients. However, patients may not increase on the ground that women are a larger amount of consumers. Even we assume that men are a larger group of potential consumers, only to emphasize on the effectiveness of their anesthetic techniques and the sensitivity of their staff to nervous or suffering patients may finally contribute to little to attract men. The most significant factor should include supreme treating techniques and condition.

To sum up, the author's evidence did not perfectly support his conclusion. To persuade me, he needs to provide more statistics that men are more depressed than women seeing the dentists on the basis of equally amount of numbers. To further access the argument, we need to know what advance methods need to be given out to attract more patients to visit the dentists.