argument35 【7\8\9\10】为什么没有人修改argument呢？

1001storyUID: 2516918

TOPIC: ARGUMENT35 - The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia.

"Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, for the past several decades food-processing companies have also been adding salicylates to foods as preservatives. This rise in the commercial use of salicylates has been found to correlate with a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by participants in our twenty-year study. Recently, food-processing companies have found that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods. With this new use for salicylates, we can expect a continued steady decline in the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia."
WORDS: 618

This argument seems well-presented at first glance, but not thoroughly well-reasoned after the seriously examined. It concludes that by adding the Salicylates as preservatives in the food the average number of headaches steadily declined during the past twenty years. Therefore, the author assumes that this trend will continue in the future by using the Salicylates as flavor additives. The evidence and assumption provided in this argument seems logical.

  First of all, the threshold problem of this argument is that the author considers Salicylates could treat headaches as aspirin just based on the factor that they are in the same family of chemical materials. Yet the same family may not lend sufficient supports to the same function of the headaches treatment. It is possible that Salicylates do not have any connection with the headaches therapy.

Secondly, the study appears to suffer from a statistic problem, which renders the study's result unreliable. The author fails to provide information regarding the absolute number of participants in this study. It is possible that the number may be very small, for example just two or three ones, which, in itself, does not ensure the representativeness of all residents in Mentia. If the participants included a great deal of the young and children who have a better health situation, the study could not conclude the result of this study. Moreover, assuming the result of the study is valid, but we might not consider that the declination of the headaches is due to Salicylates applied in the food as preservatives. It could have resulted from other factors instead: the participant may not consume any foods having preservatives, and just eat the food rich in Salicylates, which are many and available as indicated in the argument; The environment surrounding participants may changed lot which is helpful for the prevention of headaches; The people in this study just altered the style of their daily life to a more salutary one. Without ruling out these scenarios such as these, the arguer can not establish the case-and-effect relationship between preservatives and the reduction of headaches upon which the author's conclusion depends.
Finally, assuming that Salicylates can reduce the number of headaches as the preservatives in foods, the arguer can not deduce that the implementation adding Salicylates as flavor additives may play the same role in the continuous declining of the headaches. Perhaps the people in Mentia may not like this flavor because of the traditional custom in foods' flavor. If the author can not exclude factors like such mentioned above, he could not believe that flavor additives will reduce the number of headaches as the function of preservatives.

  In addition, an important problem is involved in the definition of the treatment. The arguer fails to find the difference between treatment and the prevention. The number of the headaches declined, which indicates that there may be an efficacious prevention used in the study. However, the author just reveals that Salicylates could be used as a treatment of headaches, and do not give some evidence about the Slicylates' function as prevention for headaches. So it is impossible for the author to give the conclusion that the use of Salicylates can reduce the possibilities of headaches.
  To sum up, the author fails to strengthen his claim that Salicylates attributing to the declination of headaches can make sense, because the evidence cited in this argument dose not lend strong support to what the arguer maintains. To make the argument more convincing, the author would have to demonstrate that a clear connection between the declination and Salicylates, and provide the definite function of Salicylates by an additional research. If the argument can include the given factors, this argument could have been more thoroughly and logically acceptable.

为什么没人重视ARGUMENT 呢？不要忘了，我们是冲着满分去的！！:loveliness: