A pet food company recalled 4 million pounds of pet food in response to complaints that pets that had consumed the food experienced vomiting, lethargy, and other signs of illness. After the recall, the pet food company tested samples from the recalled food and determined that all chemicals found in the food were chemicals that are approved for use in pet food. Thus, the recalled food was not responsible for these symptoms, and the company should not devote further resources to the investigation.
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 if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The conclusion of the author can be undermined through a scrupulous analysis of the reasoning, since it is possible to detect several flaws. These regards the consistency of the samples that have been tested, the motivation behind the analysis and the interpretation of results.
First of all, the author reports that samples of the 4 million pounds of pet food have been analysed. However, no quantitative information is reported in order to evaluate their validity, such as the number of pounds per each sample or the statistical method to form those. As a consequence, the quantity of pet food that has been investigated may be too small, and thus not representative of the entire recalled food, in order to obtain a non-misleading outcome.
Furthermore, it is told that the testing has been directed by the company itself. In this circumstance, it is likely that a conflict of interest can arise among the fair conduction of the study and the reputation of the company on the market. Actually, the highest interest of the management is to demonstrate that the product it is not responsible for the illness experienced by the plethora of pets. Therefore, the truthfulness of the study could be doubt when suspecting that the favourable outcome has been forced to maintain a solid and stable reputation in the market.
Moreover, even allowing for the coherence of the sample and the absence of interest conflicts, the result interpretation could be wrongful. The fact that all the chemicals founded in the samples are approved by the law does not exclude a priori that the company’s product cannot be deleterious for pets. For instance, the combination of some elements may generate a reaction producing harmful effect. It may be also the case that the product itself is not damaging for animals, but some irregularities have manifested during the production of the recalled 4 million pounds of feed. Notwithstanding, this does not absolve the company from its responsibilities.
To sum up, from the accurate analysis of the author’s argumentation it is possible to rebut the final claim. However, in order to strength his position, the author should provide quantitative information on the samples and erase any possibilities for the presence of conflicts during the investigation. Finally, he should introduce more evidence on the chemical elements presented in the pet food.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 387 350
No. of Characters: 1951 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.435 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.041 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.054 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.765 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.576 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.327 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.081 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 399, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...cal elements presented in the pet food.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, therefore, thus, for instance, such as, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2003.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 387.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.17571059432 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43534841618 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.15463134926 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.503875968992 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 632.7 705.55239521 90% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 37.6203949693 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.823529412 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.7647058824 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.52941176471 5.70786347227 149% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.239077393934 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0716233220436 0.0743258471296 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0907245062578 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.116137892809 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102099894147 0.0628817314937 162% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.05 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.