The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine. A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep t

In the article, the author argues that businesses should hire only people who need less than six hours of sleep per night. At first glance, it seems logical. However, unsubstantiated assumptions lead me to conclude that the argument is unsound in many respects.

At first, the author assumes that the study is reliable and can be applied to further reasoning. However, since the study was conducted only for 300 people,the sample may not be extendable to the other companies.

Secondly, another assumption that the author makes is that the less amount of sleep of executives yield benefits for the companies. However, an association between the amount of sleep of executives and the success of their firms cannot be regarded as a causal relationship. Therefore, it is hard to say that the amount of sleep the executives need cause the success of their firms. It is plausible that the success of their firms are not due to their executives’ less amount of sleep but due to their innate talents. Even if the executives’ workload has been improved, it is not sufficient to argue that the success of the company is only because of the executives. Thus, the author must take into consideration that the success of the company is not due to the amount of sleep of the executives.

Last but not least, the author assumes that the study can be generalized to other employees. Executives of a company have responsibility of their company because their company’s profit is directly related to their personal benefits. Since executives have more motivation and responsibility than others, it is not appropriate to have the same criteria to other employees. Also, since the study was on an advertising field, it may not be extendable to other fields of businesses. Generally, advertising works have a lot of works and rapid process, the amount of sleep in the advertising field may be different from other fields.

In brief, the argument is illogical on many grounds. In older to bolster the argument, the author should explicitly explain the reliability of the experiment without an assumption. Also, the author also needs to eliminate the assumption that the study conducted on advertising executives can be equitable to other employees.