17. The following appeared in an article in a consumer-products magazine.
“Two of today’s best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease.”
17.
In this article, the author recommends people buy Acid-Ease because it is the effective milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid. This recommendation is based on two pieces of evidence. One is the fact that both Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, which are now available in milder nonprescription forms, are best-selling brands of full- strength prescription medicine for relief of excess stomach acid. The other one is the comparison between these two medicines, showing that 76 million more prescriptions have been written for Acid-Ease than for Pepcicaid. However, this argument is logically flawed for several major aspects.
To begin with, the author assumes that the more prescriptions made by the doctors for one specific medicine, the more effective the medicine is. This statement is unwarranted because no evidence shows that such relationship exists. The effectiveness of the medicine cannot be prime facie determined by the number of prescriptions made for it. For instance, if Pepcicaid is quite a new brand and because it is effective doctors began to prescribe it frequently, whereas Acid-Ease has been used for many years but becomes less popular among doctors recently, even though doctors have written more prescription for Acid-Ease, the trend of preference in recent days may suggests that Pepcicaid be better than Acid-Ease.
In addition, the author presupposes that if one brand of medicine is the best-selling one, this medicine is effective. However, no evidence is provided to support this assumption. It probably true that the quality of the medicine, to some extent, relates to how well it is sold, but the best-selling brand cannot itself guarantee the effectiveness of medicine. The good sale of the medicine possibly can be attributed to something else such as advertising, selling strategy and etc.
Finally, the author recommends Acid-Ease be the effective milder nonprescription medicine for the relief of excess stomach acid without offering any information about other similar milder nonprescription medicines. The author only compares the Acid-Ease with Pepcicaid. If some other milder nonprescription medicines not mentioned by the author are more effective than either Acid-Ease or Pepciciad, the recommendation by the author is biased and may mislead the consumers.
In conclusion, this argument is questionable and open to doubt in that it fails to provide sufficient evidence and information to support the assumptions inferred in the article. To make this recommendation more convincing, the author should offer evidence to show that the number of prescriptions made by doctors for a certain medicine and how well that medicine is sold can determine the effectiveness of the medicine. Furthermore, the author should make sure that there is no other milder nonprescription medicine for the relief of excess stomach acid is better than Acid-Ease.
[此贴子已经被作者于2006-3-1 12:40:09编辑过] |