Workers in the small town of Leeville take fewer sick days than workers in the large city of Masonton, 50 miles away. Moreover, relative to population size, the diagnosis of stress-related illness is proportionally much lower in Leeville than in Masonton.

The claim by the Leeville chamber of Commerce that “ less chances of stress related illness in town Leeville is attributed to health benefits of the relatively relaxed pace of life in Leevilee” on first reading seems to be true but on a closer scrutiny, it has various loopholes which render this argument inefficacious. The claim represents a comparison between levels of stress-related illness of a town Leeville and city Masonton and rests on weak assumptions which need to be corrected.

Firstly the argument states that workers in small town of Leeville take fewer sick leaves than workers in the large city Masonton and hence is attributing this factor to healthy relaxed pace of life in Leeville. It seems that the author is concluding this result in a haste as more sick leaves in Masonton may be because of conditions of the city like more pollution; more bacterial, fungal infections; respiratory diseases or more contagious diseases. It can’t be concluded that the pace of life in Leeville is more relaxed.

Furthermore, more sick leaves may be because of the types of jobs in Masontan. For instance, people in this city may be engaged in more laborious jobs like industrial jobs, manufacturing jobs, engineering jobs and on the other hand people in Leeville may be engaged in family businesses where they can get leaves easily. So the author must have mentioned the nature of work quality to substantiate his point.

Also, the author has extrapolated the results as lesser sick leaves of workers cannot lead to conclusion for the whole population. Generalisation of the evidence is making the argument more flimsy as it may be possible that the owners of the businesses in Leeville are taking more leaves than in Masonton.

In a nutshell it could be stated that the evidences provided in the above argument are insubstantial and hence non convincing. Had the author provided certain evidences like nature of job, conditions of city, other non-stress related illnesses, then the argument would have been more persuasive.