The following appeared as part of a letter to the editor of a scientific journal.
"A recent study of eighteen rhesus monkeys provides clues as to the effects of birth order on an individual's levels of stimulation. The study showed that in stimulating situations (such as an encounter with an unfamiliar monkey), firstborn infant monkeys produce up to twice as much of the hormone cortisol, which primes the body for increased activity levels, as do their younger siblings. Firstborn humans also produce relatively high levels of cortisol in stimulating situations (such as the return of a parent after an absence). The study also found that during pregnancy, first-time mother monkeys had higher levels of cortisol than did those who had had several offspring."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The author discusses the effect of order of birth on individual's levels of stimulation based on a study of eighteen rhesus monkeys. One can get skeptical about the conclusions drawn from the study as it was conducted on a very small sample. Additionally, the study was conducted on a particular type of species amoung monkeys which precludes the study from applying the same to human beings. The conclusion that the first-time mother monkeys have higher levels of cortisol than otherwise wouldn't have seems spurious for some reasons which we will see in the subsequent discussion
Anyone with a very basic statistic knowledge would argue that the sample size for the study is too small to conduct any scientific study. It is highly plausible that the chosen sample was not a representative sample of the entire population and any conclusion drawn from the study would be applicable only to that sample.
Consequently, any conclusion drawn from the study would not hold true for the population. So we cannot say for sure that in rhesus monkeys, firstborn infant monkeys produce up to twice as much of the hormone cortisol as do their younger siblings.
The firstborn infant monkeys produced up to twice as much of the hormone cortisol as do their younger siblings could be due to exposing firstborn infant monkeys to set of stimulating situations different from those to which younger siblings were exposed. This procedure would introduce bias in the study making the study fundamentally erroneous. It is also possible that in the study, the firstborn infants were compared with younger siblings whose age was obviously lesser. This scenario may not give rliable results.
We should note that the study was conducted on rhesus monkeys. Based on the conclusions drawn from this study, the author has concluded that firstborn humans also produce relatively high levels of cortisol in stimulating situations which is a gaffe. Though monkeys and humans look similar in some ways physically, we should first examine how are humans similar to monkeys biologically. Unless we have sound evidence that humans are biologically similar to rhesus monkey, we cannot expect the same charateristics to be shown by humans as shown by rhesus monkeys.
In the end the author concludes that during pregrancy, first-time mother monkeys had higher levels of cortisol than did those who had several offspring. It could be very well the case that the monkeys with which the first-time mother monkeys had been compared to had low cortisol levels inherently or durnig first pregnancy as well. In such case, it would a gaffe for the author to come to a such conclusion.
As we can see, there can be multiple explainations as to why one can get the stated results as long as we don't conduct a more exhaustive study containing more samples as well as studying how similar are humans are to rhesus monkeys.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 480 350
No. of Characters: 2366 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.681 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.929 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.661 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.138 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.361 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.631 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.204 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 7 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 489, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: wouldn't
...igher levels of cortisol than otherwise wouldnt have seems spurious for some reasons wh...
^^^^^^^
Line 31, column 107, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...an get the stated results as long as we dont conduct a more exhaustive study contain...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, consequently, first, if, look, may, so, well, as to, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2442.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 478.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10878661088 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67581127817 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71211697918 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.437238493724 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 744.3 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.3645920892 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.526315789 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1578947368 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.63157894737 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186090605061 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0724516880756 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0782685597439 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0966641772933 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.054899601576 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.08 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
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.