Arguement 76

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The following appeared as part of an article in a health and beauty magazine.
"A group of volunteers participated in a study of consumer responses to the new Luxess face cream. Every morning for a month, they washed their faces with mild soap and then applied Luxess. At the end of that month, most volunteers reported a marked improvement in the way their skin looked and felt. Thus it appears that Luxess is truly effective in improving the condition of facial skin."


  In this argument, the writer of the article concludes that the new Luxess face cream is effective in improving the condition of facial skin on the basis of the result of a study which a group of volunteers participated in, washing faces with mild soap and the face cream during one month time, then feeling improvement of their faces. In my view, this conclusion does not hold water.

  Firstly, there is no evidence to convince that the participators in this study are representative. The article just mentions “a group of volunteers”, that no more details are provided, just like the number and the ages of the volunteers and the condition of their facial skin before using the face cream. As it is known that everyone’s facial condition varies from others’, that some people’s skin tends to be dry, while some others’ tends to be wet. Then perhaps the participators’ facial conditions happen to be the same type, that we could only come to a conclusion that the face cream is effective in improving the condition of this type facial skin, not all.

  Secondly, no information provided helps exclude other possible reasons of the improvement of the volunteers’ facial condition. In this experiment, the volunteers washed their faces with mild soap and then applied the face cream. Then the question arises: how can we know the essentially effective stuff is the mild soap or the face cream or even the good habit of washing face every day?

  Thirdly, only one month time is not long enough to convince that this product is also effective in the future. Maybe in the first month, the face cream indeed takes effect in improving the condition of the facial skin, but in the long run, it appeared useless, or even has some negative effect to the skin.

  Finally, it is unscientific to judge the effect of the face cream merely by the volunteers’ own feelings. Because of using a new product, most people tend to have a idea that there must be some change, but actually not a bit. A scientific research should be used to test their skin conditions, instead of subjective feelings.

  To sum up, the conclusion is ill-grounded and we need more convincing evidences and information to evaluate the argument.