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  3. The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the re

The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the re

游客2024-01-12  8
问题 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."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
选项
答案     In the summary of a study, the commercial use of salicylates is considered as the main cause of the decline in the average number of headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia, and thus the new use of this chemical as flavor additives will surely bring continued steady decline in the number of headaches. While the new use for salicylates may have the predicted result, this conclusion relies on several assumptions, but the evidence listed in the summary is neither strong nor pertinent enough to support the claim. When these assumptions prove wrong, the projection of the continued decline in the number of headaches will be greatly weakened.
    First, the article cites a twenty-year study that reveals a steady decline in the number of reported headaches with an implicit assumption that the study is valid. Nonetheless, little information other than its 20-year duration is provided about the details of this study, and it raises the suspicion whether this study is well-founded in the first place. For example, if the study only tracks a very small number of participants, its result may not be statistically significant. Moreover, if the participants did not faithfully report their feelings about headaches, the conclusion of the study would be seriously challenged. As a result, without first demonstrating the logical soundness of the study, any further inference built upon that study remains questionable.
    Even if we acknowledge for a moment that the study is valid and sound, it remains to be seen if the declining number of headaches suffered by Mentia residents can be confidently attributed to the commercial use of salicylates merely based on the fact that the decline is concurrent with an increased use of salicylates as food preservatives. Behind the author’s lines of reasoning lies the assumption that concurrence equals causality, but in fact this type of causal association may well be false. Indeed, as mentioned in the passage, other kinds of medicines such as aspirin can also be used to treat headaches, providing a potential alternate cause for the purported decline in the number of headaches. It is possible that the participants in the study suffer less from headaches now because they have been taking other kinds of medicine or headache-curing substances. Unless additional evidence shows that the participants have not been taking any other medicines to treat headaches, the author’s assumptive causal inference between the use of salicylates and the declining headache cases cannot be convincingly established. In this scenario, the subsequent prediction on the basis of this assumption will be cast into significant doubt.
    Next, granted that the decline in the number of headaches is indeed caused by the increase in the commercial use of salicylates as preservatives, it remains questionable whether the new use of salicylates as flavor additives will cause a continued steady decline of headaches. The author assumes that salicylates as preservatives will have the same effect as salicylates as flavor additives, but this assumption lacks evidence to support. For instance, the concentration of salicylates as flavor additives might be so low that it is incapable of producing any noticeable effect on reducing the number of headaches. It is also possible that other ingredients added to the foods as flavor supplements will adversely affect the effects of salicylates. If salicylates undergo certain biochemical reactions with other ingredients in the body after digestion and form new compounds without any treatment effects on headaches, there may be no further steady decline in the number of headaches. Either way, salicylates may not continue to produce the same treating effects as they did in the study, and the number of headaches may therefore not witness a steady decline in the future.
    All in all, the assumptions made by the author are not convincing enough to lead to the predicted continued steady decline in the number of headaches. To establish a causal relationship between the new use of salicylates as additives and firmly corroborate the projected decline, more investigation must be made to exclude the possibilities listed above that can falsify the author’s conclusion. (607 words)
解析     本题存在两个很经典的Argument逻辑问题，也很适合刚刚上手的同学练习，以学习掌握这些经典逻辑问题的写法。首先，文章的论证建立在受访者报告头痛的人数下降这一信息之上，而这个研究如同一般的调查、问卷、访谈等研究一样，作者都是先假设其是正确的。那么我们自然可以发问，这些研究是如何进行的?其中受访者的数量有没有足够大并且随机?样本是不是具有普遍的代表性?如果这些回答是否定的，那么建立在这一信息之上的后续论证都存在问题。
    第二，当我们认可了研究数据本身的可靠性之后，接下来存在的第二个经典逻辑问题我们可以称之为“同时发生的事情不一定有因果关系”。在本题中，作者把“上升的水杨酸使用量”和“下降的头痛数”用一个因果关系联系了起来，认为前者是后者的原因。但我们知道相关性不能代表因果关系，有可能是后者引起了前者，也有可能头痛人数的下降是其他因素导致的，与水杨酸的使用仅为巧合。我们在第二段中把作者所做出的“同时发生等于因果关系”这一假设指明。
    最后将本题的逻辑框架罗列如下，以供大家参考。
    (水杨酸广泛用作添加剂+头痛人数少了)→水杨酸可以治疗头痛+水杨酸正被作为增味剂→未来本地头痛的人数会更少
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