标题: 31号考试了，麻烦大神帮看看第一篇argument [打印本页] 作者: ln0618 时间: 2013-8-21 14:51 标题: 31号考试了，麻烦大神帮看看第一篇argument Argument 41
The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of bicycle-related accidents has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the argument, the author claims that the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets in order to reduce the number of serious injures from bicycle accidents. Nevertheless, careful scrutiny of this argument reveals several grave fallacies, albeit it may appear plausible at a cursory glance.
First of all, a threshold problem arises in this argument that the author presumes that the augment of the number of bicycle-related accidents is enormous. 200 percent augment seems huge, however, this contention is open to a number of interpretations. Lacking of the information of the number of bicycle-related accidents of both present and ten year ago, the author fails to convince me that the rate of accident has increased. There is a possibility that the number of the bicyclists increases a lot, yet, the rate of accident is maintain the same or even below that of ten years ago. Without cogent evidence, by no means could the author confirm that the condition of injures from the bicycle accident gets worse.
Moreover, there is still an apparent flaw lies that the author presumes that the reason for the bicycle accidents is that the bicyclists feel safer and take more risks because they are wearing helmets. It may be reasonable that the bicyclists reduce some vigilance when bicycling, but the author provides no evidence on conducting the thoughts of the bicyclists and it is quite possible that the bicyclists, who are wearing helmets, care more about safety issues rather than take risk to do something dangerous.
Ultimately, even the evidence turns out to uphold the foregoing assumptions, a crucial problem remains that the author presumes that the number of bicycle-related accident can be reduced through educating people about bicycle safety. Nevertheless, other possibilities will cast doubts on the author’s presumption. For example, some people will not keep the safety education in mind, and they still lack awareness to keep an eye on safety. Even people are aware of the bicycle safety, the author cannot preclude the possibilities that other reasons other than bicyclists themselves to cause the accident, such as the quality of bicycles and the conditions of the roads.
In retrospect, the argument is unconvincing at its stand. To better assess the soundness of the assertion, the author should mull over his assumptions and then furnish it with cogent evidence so as to pave the way for a more tenable argument.