A recently issued twenty-year study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia investigated the possible therapeutic effect of consuming salicylates. Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, food-processing companies also add salicylates to foods as preservatives. The twenty-year study found a correlation between the rise in the commercial use of salicylates and a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by study participants. At the time when the study concluded, food-processing companies had just discovered that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods, and, as a result, many companies plan to do so. Based on these study results, some health experts predict that residents of Mentia will suffer even fewer headaches in the future.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The author quotes from some health experts that residents of Mentia will suffer fewer headaches in the future. This conclusion is based on an assumption that Salicylates _ seemingly a therapeutic drug for headaches_ would be added more in the food consumed by the residents of Mentia. The argument above is replete with the equivocal conditions that only answering to certain questions would illustrate the argument.
First, the author needs to ask whether salicylates definitely has any therapeutic effect or not. Merely being in the chemical family of the aspirin does not guarantee that the effects are also similar. Moreover, what category of residents is studied? It is possible that salicylate only affects certain hormones in females that resulted in not having a headache, while it does not have any effects on the male members of the society. In that case it is not reasonable to generalize the results to the whole society.
Secondly, the writer needs to answer that whether other painkiller components were used by people of the Mentia beside the salicylate or not. It is possible that people are introduced to another family of painkillers and are using them, then the decrease of the headaches and increase of using salicylates in processed food might just be a coincidence. Hence the author needs to show that no alternative plays a role in decreasing of the headaches.
Thirdly, assuming that salicylates has therapeutic effects and it was because of salicylates that the people of Mentia felt fewer headaches, the author still needs to ask what dosage of the salicylates would have these effects. It is possible that the optimum effect of the salicylate has been reached already, and no matter how much it is added to the food, it might not have any further effect. Furthermore, is it possible that such decrease in the headaches will be continued in the future? The salicylate may not be a panacea for all kinds of headaches. The people of Mentia might be subjected to some pollution in the future that causes headaches for them and salicylates cannot do anything with that kind headaches.
In short, as discussed, there are enumerated questions left unaddressed in the author’s argument. Answering these questions direct the reader to evaluate the study, which the whole prediction is based on.
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argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1894 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.971 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.711 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.261 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.552 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5