Argument165 【7\8\9\10】第十九次作业 8.10

DemiquaverUID: 203651

TOPIC: ARGUMENT165 - 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."
WORDS: 430          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2008-8-10 21:25:49

According to this argument, Promofood concluded that cans of tuna which was blamed for causing dizziness and nausea did not contain chemicals that posed a health risk. To support this conclusion, results of some tests made on recalled cans by chemists from Promofoods were cited. As it stands, the argument suffers from several critical flaws as follows.

To begin with, the tests made by chemists from Promofoods are not thoroughly presented, which leaves the results unconvincing. For example, the author provides no information about how many cans that are recalled served as samples in the tests. If there were only a few cans tested, the results could not play as a representative role of other cans. In short, fewer the samples are, lesser reliable the conclusion is.

Furthermore, the author presents that five of the eight chemicals which are most commonly blamed for causing the symptoms of dizziness and nausea were not found in any of the tested cans. However, this evidence cannot strongly support the conclusion because it clearly ignores other chemicals that might exist in the tested cans which could also cause same symptom. Without ruling out this possibility, it is unjustified that recalled cans of tuna cannot cause dizziness and nausea.

Last but not least, the conclusion is unconvincingly based on another fact that the three remaining suspected chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods, which indicates that conditions of cans made by Promofoods are same to other canned foods and cannot able to cause the symptoms dizziness and nausea. However, it is not the case. First of all, the author doesn’t tell us whether the amount of the three remaining chemicals in tested cans equals to that in other canned foods. It is entirely possible that cans of tuna made by Promofoods have larger amount of the three remaining chemicals than other foods, which might cause the symptom of dizziness and nausea while other foods might not. What's more, common sense informs me that same chemicals in different food might cause different effective. Consequently, it could also be a possibility that cans of tuna made by Promofoods might cause dizziness and nausea.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence in the argument does not lend strong support to the claim. To strengthen this argument, the author should provide more information about the tests and rule out other chemicals exist in cans of tuna which might also cause dizziness and nausea. Similarly, we should be informed that conditions of canned tuna made by Promofoods are same with other canned foods.