▶ Your Answer :The author argues that the lavender flowers are effective in curing insomnia based on the study conducted with 30 volunteers who suffer from chronic insomnia for 3 weeks. The author is claiming that the efficacy was proved by the fact that the volunteers slept longer and more soundly during the 3rd week than the previous two weeks by using lavender-scented pillows when they sleep in controlled rooms. The author’s argument might seem to be convincing, however, the argument is based the evidences which raise several questions which should be answered to make the argument compelling. Firstly, the author’s evidence that ‘the volunteers slept longer and more soundly’ proves the effectiveness of lavender flowers in insomnia is unwarranted since it does not provide detailed and subject evidence of the effectiveness. For example, how many hours each volunteer slept before and after the study should be presented to prove that volunteers slept longer and quantitative analysis investigating the volunteers’ quality of sleep needs to be demonstrated to verify that volunteers slept more soundly. Also, the argument lacks credibility since the number of the subjects and the period of study might not be enough to generalize the result. Secondly, the author’s evidence fails to acknowledge that there might be other variable which could have influenced on the volunteers’ sleeping patterns. In other words, change of the sleeping environment might have impacted on volunteers’ psychological stability, which might have resulted in the less sleeping hours during the first two weeks. However, the author is not considering such possibilities. Therefore, the author’s assumption could be supported when he or she identifies all other potential variables which could be related to the result of study and proves that such variables were excluded from the actual test. Finally, the inconsistent testing condition could raise a question of reliability of the argument. To elaborate, the volunteers took medication for the first week, but they discontinued the intake for the next 2 weeks. Such different testing condition undermines the accuracy and reliability of the study and it cannot be a sufficient evidence to verify the author’s argument. To bolster the author’s argument, it should be guaranteed that the testing conditions were kept identically during the whole period of study. In summary, the author’s argument is not cogent enough because the presented evidences are not fully warranted. Therefore, the author is required to provide specific and quantified analysis about the change of volunteers’ sleeping patterns and make sure that the lavender flowers were the only variable which could affect volunteers’ sleeping environment. Additionally, if the author could clarify that the testing conditions were inconsistent during the study, the argument can be strengthened. |