Argument 165

TOPIC: ARGUMENT165 - The following appeared in a business magazine.
"As a result of numerous consumer complaints of dizziness and nausea, Promofoods requested that eight million cans of tuna be returned for testing last year. Promofoods concluded that the cans did not, after all, contain chemicals that posed a health risk. This conclusion is based on the fact that the chemists from Promofoods tested samples of the recalled cans and found that, of the eight 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 that the three remaining suspected chemicals are naturally found in all other kinds of canned foods."

WORDS: 336 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2008-3-31 13:58:42

The verdict of this statement is that tuna cans produced by Promofoods last year were healthy; therefore tuna cans were not the cause of consumer's dizziness and nausea. To support this conclusion, the speaker cites the result of experiment conducted by chemists from Promofoods: merely three chemicals were found in tuna cans and these three chemicals were common in any other kind of canned foods. This statement seems reasonable at first glance; however, close scrutiny of evidence unveils that this statement actually suffers from several blemishes, which would be discussed below.

Firstly, identification of the leaders of the survey would undermine the credibility of ultimateness: these chemists were employed by Promofoods. It is highly possible that these scientists were influenced or threatened by chief executive of Promofoods. Therefore, chemists who conducted the test of tuna cans may offer a false report that defied the truth.

Secondly, whether the tested tuna cans were based on random sampling is unknown. Perhaps chemists intentionally selected those tuna cans that were quite unlikely to be proved to contain disease-causing chemicals. It is also equally probable that merely 10 cans were sampled from eight million cans of tuna, which thus did not represent the majority of these cans. Consequently, any factor aforementioned above would undermine the conclusion.

Thirdly, even though the test conducted by Promofoods is fair and objective, the result did not consider certain other possible factors that might lend the support to this statement. Actually speaking, how many the three suspected chemicals had been discovered in sample is not touched. Therefore, we can not rule out the possibility that these three chemicals far outweighed standard of canned foods; therefore, it is actually these three excessive chemicals that contributed to dizziness and nausea of clientele.

In summary, this statement fails to convince us in many respects, as discussed above. To support the culmination, the speaker would have to demonstrate that chemists of Promofoods reported the truth of survey, and further provide more detailed information about the three kinds of suspected chemicals.