“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.
By citing the observational result of a recent three weeks study made over 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia, the author claims that the scent of lavender successfully cures insomnia. At the first sight, the argument seems convincing; however, on closer scrutiny, several alternative explanations could be made which can seriously undermine the conclusion. The author should provide evidences regarding following issues in order to evaluate the argument.
First of all, the first piece of evidence the author fails to provide for the proper evaluation of the argument is the category of patients. Since, age group, sex, and health condition of the volunteers are imperative for the proper evaluation of the argument, one cannot evaluate the validity of the argument in the absence of proper information about all these factors. Further, the number of volunteers taken for the study (30 volunteers), and the time period for which the study has been carried out (3 weeks) are not sufficient to make proper evaluation of the argument.
Secondly, the author fails to provide evidence about the way by which the sleep of the patients was monitored electronically during the study. Their sleep during the time of experiment could have different reasons—perhaps, these people felt more safe and secured in the group of 30 than in their homes, and so they slept well. If this is the case, then it is highly probable that they will suffer from the same disease when taken to their homes.
Thirdly, the author fails to provide evidence about the extent and the continuity of the lavender scent exposed over the patients from the pillow, and naively assumes that all the patients receive same amount of lavender scent and it will last for the whole night. However, this assumption falls short given the lack of evidence. It is possible that the source of scent deplete as time passes and do not last for the whole night. If it is the case, then It is possible that the longer sleep of these patients in the third week could be the effect of the same medication they took for the first two weeks.
In sum, though the argument seems plausible, it lacks its persuasiveness due to its reliance upon several flaws and unwarranted assumptions. The author should provide evidences regarding the topics mentioned above in order to evaluate the argument. Unless the author provides such convincing evidences, the argument remains highly dubious and cannot be reasonably evaluated.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 2009 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.936 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.523 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 101 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.438 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.226 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.363 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.363 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.123 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5