Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than

The author claims that the results and approach of a previous study conducted by Dr.Field have been proved invalid by his recent interview-based research on the same island and that his approach will give more accurate and general results. However, numerous pieces of key evidence are worth investigating before we take his argument to be sound.

The first piece of information needed to evaluate the argument is that the tradition on the island has not changed over the past 20 years. Dr.Field conducted his research 20 years ago whereas the author did his study only recently. The newly found evidence may contradict the previous conclusion, but perhaps the tradition has changed over this time. 20 years ago, children on the island of Tertia were reared by their village but now they are raised mainly by their biological parents. In this case, therefore, both studies are correct, but the author cannot disprove the previous results merely by the discrepancy between the recent evidence and findings 20 years ago. If, however, evidence suggests that no such change has taken place, then the argument would be strengthened.

The most direct evidence the author provides is the fact that children of Tertia and other islands spend more time talking about their biological parents than other adults. This piece of evidence is highly questionable since it suggests a larger research scope than that of the previous study, which was done only on the Island of Tertia. A more general result on the group of islands may not be right for Tertia. Perhaps most of the children from Tertia do not spend more time talk about their biological parents but children from other islands do. Because the children from Tertia only make up a small fraction of the sample, the researchers concluded that in this group of islands, children talk more about their biological parents. Clearly, this result does not apply to the case of Tertia. If this were the case, the conclusion would be seriously weakened.

Even if the children from Tertia do talk more about their biological parents, to fully evaluate this article, the reader still needs to know the evidence that provides a convincing link between this fact and the child-rearing tradition. In other words, the author needs to explain why the children who talk a lot about their biological parents are most likely raised by them. It seems possible that the biological parents are always special to a child whether they raise the child or not. Only being provided with the missing link can the reader fully be convinced.

Suppose the author provides all the evidence mentioned above and refutes the previous research successfully, he still cannot conclude the method used by Dr.Field was invalid. A right approach can still produce erroneous results. Dr.Field could have used a great method but made a few mistakes and drew the wrong conclusion. It could turn out to be the case, for example, that he did his observation in a period when people had much leisure time and the children visited other families a lot, whereas most of the time, however, children stayed in their parents' house. In order to prove the method ineffective, the author needs a lot of additional evidence, such as a detailed analysis of hundreds of anthropological studies, an investigation into the flaws of the observational method, etc.

As indicated by my analysis, the current argument is uncertain to be sound or not. The reader needs additional evidence to get a more complete understanding of Dr.Karp’s article. Yet if the author can give evidence to fill the missing links, his argument would work.