The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine."A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep t

In this excerpt form magazine, the author points out that if a business wants to promote, it should hire only people who less than 6 hours of sleep per night. To support this projection, the article renders the fact that if executivers need no more than 6 hours of sleep per night, they have higher profit. To further support the conclusion the article also cites the Mentian advertising executivers. Close scrutiny of each of these facts reveals that none of them lends credible support to the conclusion as it stands.

Regarding the first evidence, the argument seems to assume that needing less time for sleeping is the only way to gain more profit. However, it ignores other possible condition that help companies to have more profit; for example; hiring more educated employees and doing research about demands in society to name just a few. Without ruling out alternative possibilities such as these, the author can not justify the assertion that hiring people who need less time for sleeping is a good way to reach higher profit or faster growth.

Another problem with the argument is that it assumes that Mentian advertising executives is representative of all execurives, but it is not necessarily the case. Perhaps they have a special condition. For example, they need to go to work early in the morning or they have to work during the night. If so, then the argument has failed to generalize that assumption to all executivers as a whole.

The study methodology is problematic in some aspects. First, the author does not indicate what percentage of executivers were engaged in study, if it turns out that they constitutes small percentage of all exectivers, then the author’s conclusion is uncalled for. Second, we are not informed whether their answers were anonymous or even confidential. If they were not, it is entirely possible that executivers might have answered in ways that they taught they looked better, regardless of whether their answers were truthful. In wither event, the study results would be unreliable to draw conclusion about all executivers.

In sum, the study relies on doubtful assumptions and questionable study that renders it unconvincing and ill grounded as it stands. The article would have been stronger had it provided information respecting working condition of Mentian executivers. The author needs to do better study that determine what properties help firms to grow faster or have higher profit.