A recent study reported that pet owners have longer, healthier lives on average than do people who own no pets. Specifically, dog owners tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. In light of these findings, Sherwood Hospital should form a partnership with Sherwood Animal Shelter to institute an adopt-a-dog program. The program would encourage dog ownership for patients recovering from heart disease, which should reduce these patients' chance of experiencing continuing heart problems and also reduce their need for ongoing treatment. As a further benefit, the publicity about the program would encourage more people to adopt pets from the shelter. And that will reduce the incidence of heart disease in the general population.
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 for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author argues that the hospital should introduce the program to promote dog ownership among pateints with heart disease and the general public based on the study suggesting that pet owners tend to live long and healthy lives. A number of assumptions have been made about the effects of dog ownership in general, the consequences of adopting dogs by patients as well as how the public would respond to the program. We need to examine such assumptions critically to decide if the argument is acceptable.
To begin with, it is assumed that dog ownership necessarily helped the people to enjoy longer and healthier lives. The study merely suggested that dog ownership is correlated with healthy and longer lives. But correlation does not necessarily imply causal relationship. Maybe pet owners (dog owners in particular) tend to have higher income and enjoy more leisure time, which mean that they will have access to better health care, healthier food and health-related amenities such as gyms. If this is the case, dog ownership is not the main reason why the dog owners enjoy better health. Promoting dog ownership would not achieve the proposed goals.
In additon, it is assumed that the patients would necessarily benefit from such a program. For one thing, we do not know if the patients would be interested in owning a dog. Maybe some of them are afraid of dogs or had unpleasant experiences with dogs in the past. For such patients, the program would not work. In addition, we do not know if the patients who join the program would get any health benefits from it. The study cited is concerned with dog owners who have lower chance of having heart disease. It does not focus on people who are recovering from the condition. Maybe the patients recovering from heart condition need more rest and would not benefit from rigourous activities such as walking a dog regularly. Also it is hard to believe the assumption that the program would make the ongoing treatment unnecessary. The health professionals will have to be consulted over this matter.
The author also predicts that with more publicity about the program the shelter would attract more people from the general public to adopt pets. But the assumption here is that the program would be successful and the paritcipants would say nice things about the program. Based on the discussion above, it is far from clear that the program would actually benefit the patients. If the patients do not find the program helpful, it would be unreasonable to expect them to promote the program and the media would be critical of the program. If the publicity is negative, the shelter would not be able to have more people to adopt pets there.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2194 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.801 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.505 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 68 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.042 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.997 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.336 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.493 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.154 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 133, Rule ID: GENERAL_XX[1]
Message: Use simply 'public'.
Suggestion: public
...ong pateints with heart disease and the general public based on the study suggesting that pet ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 723, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...vities such as walking a dog regularly. Also it is hard to believe the assumption th...
^^^^
Line 7, column 116, Rule ID: GENERAL_XX[1]
Message: Use simply 'public'.
Suggestion: public
...lter would attract more people from the general public to adopt pets. But the assumption here ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, if, may, so, well, in addition, in general, in particular, such as, as well as, for one thing, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2244.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 457.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91028446389 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62358717085 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56230063813 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.431072210066 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 686.7 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.572952779 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 93.5 119.503703932 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.0416666667 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.375 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.205576538354 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0681577589794 0.0743258471296 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0806749167987 0.0701772020484 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.140896493374 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0577248328826 0.0628817314937 92% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.2 14.3799401198 78% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.62 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.