The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine."A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep t

In the article of a business magazine, it is advised that employers should employ those who need to sleep less than 6 hours per night. This conclusion is based on the vague investigation taking place among 300 executive employees of Mentian advertising company. The author needs lots of evidence before making such a conclusion.

To begin with, a conclusive evidence is needed to show that only because of sleeping fewer hours were the employees fruitful for their firm, exclusively because of their sleeping. It is possible that there are other factors making these people effective, not their sleeping pattern. These people may be diligent, talented or more educated than others. With this scenario being the case, fewer hours of sleep are just a coincidence and cannot be attributed to such an efficiency.

Even if these people are successful because of their smaller sleeping period, the author requires to provide evidence attesting the reliability of these people’s success. The durability of the success of these people is questionable. It is possible that in a long term they develop fatigue and cause them to fall behind those who are sleeping more than 6 hours. We cannot give any credence to the article unless we know that this success is proven in a long term study.

Assuming the durability is substantial, it needs to be evinced that the result can be generalized to the given firm and others. We are only informed that 300 people from the executive branch of an advertising firm are studied. The sample may not be extendable to the other branches of the same firm, let alone all the other businesses.

Last but not least, an evidence is needed to show the readers why exactly the 6-hour period is the crucial point, and how much lesser than this time is optimum. According to common sense people who lack enough sleep, are suffering from insomnia and cannot do the regular works with efficiency. In the article’s conclusion, the author did not exclude those who have quite insufficient sleeping and are not suitable for hiring. At the same time, those who sleep more than 6 hours and are successful are not included in any critical analysis to say that those who are above 6 hours sleep are necessarily ineffective in their regular jobs.

In short, as discussed, readers of the article cannot embrace the conclusion unless the enumerated evidence are incorporated into the article. The article in its current situation is too vague to be tenable.