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50) Anancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has nowbeen proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomniaslept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlledroom where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week,volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They sleptsoundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, thevolunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they sleptless soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the thirdweek, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous twoweeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a shortperiod of time.
Write aresponse in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate theargument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In thisargument, on the basis of an experiment, the author claimed the effectivenessof lavender as a traditional remedy for insomnia. However, careful examination of this report reveals several gravefallacies in the conclusion.
A threshold problem involves the representative of thisexperiment. The author provides no evidence that 30 volunteers is statisticallysignificant or that their specific syndrome can typify the insomnia in general.Perhaps some of them got other health problems affecting their sleeping qualitysimultaneously, or perhaps some of them had the chronic insomnia for yearswhile others got it recently. Additionally, assuming that chronicinsomnia can represent all sorts of insomnia is quite unwarranted since noeffective information provided. Even if the scent of lavender proved to be aremedy for chronic insomnia, we cannot definitely conclude that it serves toother kinds of insomnia. In short, until the question of the representativenessand validity of volunteers is answered, it is impossible to assess theefficiency of the remedy.
Anotherproblem need to be clarified is the definition of the insomnia. The authorfails to give a specific description about the critical term. As a consequence,we cannot judge the sleeping quality by accurate standards. Otherwise, how longa person sleeps or how tired a person feel after awaked is irrelevant to thechronic insomnia.
Despite theproblems above, the design of the experiment also contains grave fallacious.Firstly, the volunteers’ worse sleeping quality during the second week cannotsimply attribute to the lacking of sleeping medication. It is entirely possiblethat the scent of lavender flowers actually has a negative effect on theremedy, and the sleeping medication modifies the negative effect during thefirst week. Actually, the volunteers’ worse feeling during the second weeknicely verified this assuming.
Secondly,before other possible factors are ruling out, it is hard to believe that theimprovement during the third week owing to the lavender-scented pillows only.Perhaps the volunteers just finally become accustomed to the lavender-scentedpillows and the new environment, or perhaps the scent oflavender undermined after two weeks and so did the negative effect it brought.
Moreover,since the author did not provide the specific information about how theexperiment continued during the third week including whether they had thesleeping medication or not and whether the chronic insomnia was thoroughlycured or not, the conclusion that the scent of lavender flowers is effective toinsomnia cannot be easily reached.
Inconclusion, the argument is unconvincing as it stands. To bolster it, theauthor should reexamine the representativeness of the volunteers participated,and the accurate definition of the critical term-insomnia should be clarified.Besides, the experiment should be redesigned as well. At least, the appropriatecounterpart which isolates all the factors affecting the sleeping quality mustbe carefully considered.
我的分析：
1、 缺少证据证明这项实验的参与者数量30是足够大的，而且样本是具有代表性的。
2、 缺少证据证明慢性失眠与失眠症是可以完全类比的。
3、 缺少证据证明睡的香不香、醒来累不累与失眠症状有关，偷换概念 不够准确
4、 缺少证据证明在第三周睡醒之后其感觉良好，文中没有给出，可能三周后病并没有治好
5、 缺少证据证明，第二周睡眠质量的下降仅仅只是因为去掉了通常药物而导致的，这其中没有薰衣草枕头的负面作用，极有可能是因为第一周使用了药物而中和掉了薰衣草枕头对睡眠的影响，第二周睡不好觉正是因为没有了这种中和作用，薰衣草的香气对睡眠起了负作用。
6、 即使三周后睡眠确实好转，缺少证据证明三周后的良好睡眠是由薰衣草味单一因素造成的，有可能是第一周服用的安眠药和长期稳定的睡眠或者习惯了新的睡眠环境之后造成的
7、缺少证据证明实验室中其他环境和人为因素没有对其造成影响，应该设置对照组实验
后来在写作时没有完全按照自己的分析写。。。。求各种猛拍！~
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发表于 2012-3-4 21:36:15
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