An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia – the scent of lavender flowers – has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
Traditional remedy that lavender scent cures insomnia has been proven to be effective as per the given argument. But this is not concretely established and needs certain evidences to be evaluated for such solid establishment.
Firstly, the study was conducted over 30 volunteers, is this a trustworthy count to conclude effectiveness of a traditional remedy as a successful cure. There are millions of people suffering insomnia around the world. This study should have covered a variety of volunteers for such pervasive illness. There might be different reasons for different individuals to face insomnia, one might be suffering it due to anxiety and stress, while the other might have had it through hereditary line. A perfect evidence to answer these is not presented in the argument.
Additionally, it is said that all the people were given medication throughout the study. No evidence is quoted to oppose the idea that this medication has helped them cure insomnia. Most the volunteers might have missed their regular medication in their daily routine due to several causes, and a conditioned medicaation taken in this study might have helped the individuals get cured. But the author doesn't pose a single statement to prove this case to be wrong.
Moreover, author mentioned that there was a greater disturbance in the sleep cycles of the subjects during second week. There was no other information which states the reason behind this disturbance. It is also clearly said that the subjects faced a disturbance during their fisrt week of study which got worsened by the second week. There was no explanation that either lavender or the medication were the cause behind this. The conditions in which the study occured also plays a key role on the result. It is mentioned that the subjects were allowed to sleep in a controlled environment which is not available in their everyday life. A storng evidence must be presented to deny that the cure had not occured due to this controlled environment.
Finally, author concludes that lavender cures insomnia within a short period. But there is no clear insight that all the other medications take longer durations than three weeks to cure insomnia. If it were the case that other medications might take 4 to 5 weeks to cure this, then the controlled environment and regular medication might have an additional role in this study to make it seem that the cure occred at a faster pace.
This leaves us with a conclusion that the author has made an unsupported claim to cure insomnia using traditional remedy (lavender). But there were no clear proofs to state that lavener was the only reason for the cure occured in the study.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-08-06 | rafi_an | 55 | view |
| 2018-12-10 | MaheshVishnu | 62 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 446 350
No. of Characters: 2189 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.596 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.908 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.694 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.391 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.694 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.478 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.281 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 402, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...e individuals get cured. But the author doesnt pose a single statement to prove this c...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 41, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'cures'' or 'cure's'?
Suggestion: cures'; cure's
...Finally, author concludes that lavender cures insomnia within a short period. But the...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, if, moreover, second, so, then, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2245.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 445.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04494382022 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59293186426 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75108315541 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.465168539326 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 711.9 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 43.0872855689 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 97.6086956522 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.347826087 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.17391304348 5.70786347227 56% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.178277343795 0.218282227539 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0573116982131 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.054367014679 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113846767122 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0553577700171 0.0628817314937 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.