The following appeared in a business magazine.
"As a result of numerous complaints of dizziness and nausea on the part of consumers of Promofoods tuna, the company requested that eight million cans of its tuna be returned for testing. Promofoods concluded that the canned tuna did not, after all, pose a health risk. This conclusion is based on tests performed on samples of the recalled cans by chemists from Promofoods; the chemists found that of the eight food chemicals most commonly blamed for causing symptoms of dizziness and nausea, five were not found in any of the tested cans. The chemists did find small amounts of the three remaining suspected chemicals but pointed out that these occur naturally in all canned foods."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.
The author of the article is presenting a case of a commercial product, Promofoods tuna, which was recalled for testing after numerous reported complaints from costumers. Costomers reported side effects like dizziness and nausea after consuming this product. The author is reporting that after 8 million can recalled, testing showed that no health hazard associated with the product. However, despite that the author supported his argument with the result of the chemist testing, his argument is not sufficient to reach the conclusion.
It is good action done by the producer that 8 million cans of the product were recalled after customers reports, but the most important step is to verify the health status of the product. The author mentioned that testing was done to evaluate the cans, though he did not mention what was the sample size. Of course not all 8 million recalled cans were tested, hence it is important that the sample population was representative. Cans which resulted in costumer’s complaints could be from a certain patch, therefore, it is vital to know if the testing have covered all patches. Otherwise, if the test was limited to a certain patch, the test results will not provide sufficient clues regarding the health status of the subject product.
Secondly, the author is telling us that the test was done by a chemist form Promofoods, the producer of the tuna cans. This fact by itself raises questions regarding the impartiality of the test result. Also, was the chemist qualified enough to perform this kind of studies? Was the test result confirmed by a neutral third-party lab? These factors are crucial to identfiy the credibility of the test results. Not answering these questions will render the author’s argument unconvincing.
The author mentioned that 8 chemicals were investigated in order to identify if the cans are the root cause of the reported side effects. However, the author need to provide more information if these 8 chemicals are the only possible causes for nusea and dizziness. Also, giving that the testing have found 3 of these chemicals in the cans, more investigation is needed. The author’s claim that these 3 chemicals are naturally occuring in canned food does not make them less risky. A study confirming that small amount of these 3 elements does not have any side effect is needed to make the author’s argument persuasive.
Giving all these shortcomming in author’s argument, it is hard to accept it as it stands. In order to conclude that Promofoods tuna cans are not guilty of the reported side effects, more evidence is required. At least, the author have to provide answers for the above mentioned question in order to strengthen his supporting points’
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/pet-food-company-r…
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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: 23 15
No. of Words: 449 350
No. of Characters: 2220 1500
No. of Different Words: 202 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.603 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.944 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.522 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.911 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.522 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.321 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.536 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.132 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 10, column 224, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ts, more evidence is required. At least, the author have to provide answers for t...
^^
Line 10, column 344, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...o strengthen his supporting points'
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, however, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, at least, kind of, of course
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2314.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 449.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15367483296 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60321845022 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8408617851 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.458797327394 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 703.8 705.55239521 100% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 32.5515441197 57.8364921388 56% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 100.608695652 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5217391304 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.04347826087 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.156071196373 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0491168864315 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.048615177858 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0971064789755 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0486477922444 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.