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  3. The following appeared in a health newsletter.Nosinia is a herb that many users

The following appeared in a health newsletter.Nosinia is a herb that many users

游客2024-01-12  21
问题 The following appeared in a health newsletter.
Nosinia is a herb that many users report to be as effective as prescription medications at fighting allergy symptoms. Researchers recently compared Nosinia to a placebo in 95 men and women with seasonal allergies to ragweed pollen. Participants in the study reported that neither Nosinia nor the placebo offered significant relief. However, for the most severe allergy symptoms, the researchers reported that Nosinia was more effective than the placebo in providing relief. Furthermore, at the end of the study, participants given Nosinia were more likely than participants given a placebo to report feeling healthier. We therefore recommend using Nosinia to help with your severe allergy symptoms.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
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答案     In this newsletter the author advertises the use of Nosinia to treat severe allergy symptoms based on an experiment involving 95 men and women who are allergic to ragweed pollen. The experiment claims that when compared to a placebo, Nosinia is more effective in helping those with the most severe allergy symptoms and participants receiving Nosinia are more likely to report better feelings at the end of the study. Although Nosinia could be an effective alternative to medications in relieving the pains of allergic reactions, existing information cannot help us confidently make that conclusion. Some important questions about and beyond the study mentioned in the newsletter must be addressed before the efficacy of Nosinia can be reasonably evaluated.
    The first series of questions that warrant further examination is about the very study reported by the author. For example, how were the 95 participants selected and can they reasonably represent the general population with allergies? If the 95 participants in the study are heavily biased towards certain age group, have non-evenly distributed body weight, or have certain chronic underlying conditions, the validity of the study would be substantially weakened. In addition, at the end of the study it is reported that those given Nosinia reported better feelings in terms of personal health than those given a placebo. Here the definition of healthier may or may not be directly linked to their allergies. Maybe Nosinia, an herb in nature, has some soothing effects that give the recipient a better psychological feeling but, in reality, helps little in terms of fighting allergy symptoms. This scenario again would weaken the author’s recommendation. Of course, the study may as well turn out to be valid in terms of sample selection process and the Nosinia indeed helps people with allergy symptoms so they feel better, in which case the author’s argument would be made stronger.
    Next, granted that Nosinia has a stronger effect than the placebo in the 95-person study, the fact that those volunteers in the experiment are all allergic ragweed pollen raises another critical question demanding answers. That is, can one reasonably extrapolate allergy reactions to ragweed pollen to other types of irritants? The answer could be negative, as the underlying pathological mechanisms of different kinds of allergy symptoms may differ widely. If this is the case, the mere success of Nosinia in treating allergic reactions to ragweed pollen may not imply a similar success to other allergy causes. This would undoubtedly weaken the case for using Nosinia to treat severe allergy symptoms in generic sense. At the same time, however, it is possible that the power of Nosinia in alleviating allergies extends beyond ragweed pollen, perhaps because its allergy-relieving mechanism is universal and not allergen-specific. In this scenario the recommendation for Nosinia use will be significantly strengthened.
    Finally, if we acknowledge the effectiveness of Nosinia in treating all types of severe allergy symptoms compared to placebo, it remains unclear how Nosinia’s performance compares to other medications. While many users report Nosinia to be as effective as prescription drugs, the study in the newsletter only involves Nosinia and a placebo. That is, we do not know if Nosinia is better or worse at treating severe allergy symptoms than conventional medicines. If additional experiments directly comparing Nosinia with common medications, prescription and non-prescription alike, show Nosinia is far less effective, the recommendation of using Nosinia to fight allergy cannot be fully validated. However, if it can be shown that Nosinia is no less effective than medications in alleviating severe allergy symptoms, the case for using Nosinia can be made much stronger indeed.
    To summarize, while Nosinia may have the potential to become a powerful substitute for prescription medications to fight severe allergy symptoms, this is not a conclusion that can be safely arrived based on existing information. Questions related to the validity of the study mentioned in the letter and concerning the efficacy of Nosinia compared to other medications must be answered before one can decide whether or not Nosinia is really worth recommending. (668 words)
解析     本题的逻辑框架大致可总结为：
    95名对豚草花粉过敏男女进行研究+参与者说Nosinia和安慰剂都无效果+对于最严重的过敏，Nosinia有用→Nosinia对减缓严重过敏有用
    因为本题所做的推论比较少，因此在这里我们有必要对于每一个信息本身都进行深挖，首先看到的就是这个实验设计95名志愿者的数量也许太少了，这里我们就可以提出调查类的经典问题：样本量是不是够大?采样是否有代表性?是不是随机分组抽样的?选择一到两个点，第一个论证段就可以成型了。
    第二个论证段则需要考虑本题另一个隐藏得比较深的点：偷换概念。注意在研究中95名男女对于一种特定的物质(豚草花粉)有过敏反应。而最后的结论却是Nosinia对于严重的过敏反应有缓解作用，这里作者进行了一个外推，其成立的条件是豚草花粉和其他过敏原引起人体过敏反应的机制是相同的。但生活常识告诉我们，有人只对某些物质过敏，这说明过敏反应可能针对不同的过敏原有着不同的机制。如果是这样，那么这个实验只能说明Nosinia对于豚草花粉引起的严重过敏有一定作用，而可能对其他类型的过敏原无能为力。
    最后，题目当中还有一个更加隐蔽的点：在开头作者所说的是Nosinia有潜力代替处方药用于治疗过敏，但在实验当中却没有把Nosinia和处方药进行直接比较。相反，与安慰剂的比较实验最多只能够证明Nosinia对于豚草花粉引起的严重过敏有效果，但具体的效果与现有的处方药相比如何呢?我们不得而知，因为题目当中没有给出相关的信息。
    总而言之，本题是Argument考试中最难的几道题之一。通常来说，如果大家感觉一道题目很难，没有明确的逻辑问题，很大概率是因为它的逻辑问题是隐蔽的“偷换概念”，因此在读题的时候要额外注意。
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