The following appeared in a business magazine.
"As a result of numerous complaints of dizziness and nausea on the part of consumers of Promofoods tuna, the company requested that eight million cans of its tuna be returned for testing. Promofoods concluded that the canned tuna did not, after all, pose a health risk .This conclusion is based on tests performed on samples of the recalled cans by chemists from Promofoods; the chemists found that of the eight food 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 small amounts of the three remaining suspected chemicals but pointed out that these occur naturally in all canned foods."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.
The author of the statement quotes that Promofoods concludes that the canned tuna did not have any threat to the health. This conclusion is based on the test carried out on the millions of samples the Promofood gathered; in the test seemingly there were small amounts of the chemicals bring on dizziness and nausea which even these naturally occur in the canned foods. However, the author failed to create a clear argument as they are several vague points that the author needs to illustrate.
First, the sampling of cans is questionable. The company chooses the eight million cans, but the author needs to ask whether these cans are picked randomly, indiscriminately and comprehensively. It might be the case that the tested cans were picked purposely among a series that are far from the marketing domain that customers issued complaints. Samples might not involve polluted cans in the market. Furthermore, the author needs to ask whether the time that the cans are gathered and the time that people got sick are not notably different. If there is a difference between the location and the time, where and when people got sick, then the sampling cannot show any related evidence.
Secondly, the chemical tests are not reliable. Are the test results genuine? The chemists of the Promofood might be pressed by the Promofood not to divulge genuine reports tarnishing the credit of the food company. Thus, it is hard to lend credence to them. Assuming that there is no ulterior motivation and tests are genuine, why only five chemical substances probed in the tests? It is possible that there are other hazardous substances that chemists did not probe. It is possible the limited investigation of the chemical hazards might be a plan to get away with other poisonous chemical in the cans.
Finally, the author mentions that “small” amounts of the three chemical substances exist in the sampled cans. The author needs to ask by “small” the chemists purported what exact amount of the substances. The “small” is not absolute and in turn is not reliable. A ppm (part per million) of some materials can cause grave damages to our health, therefore we need to know whether the chemicals deviated from the health standards.
In short, the contamination of the tuna cans of Promofood still remains as a probable case and the author failed to prove it otherwise. The enumerated questions, whose answer illustrate the arguments, are unaddressed by the author. Therefore, the ambiguous argument and the conclusion cannot be tenable.
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flaws:
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 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: 419 350
No. of Characters: 2050 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.524 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.893 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.581 2.4
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No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
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No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.217 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.607 7.5
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Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5