The following appeared in the summary of a study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia.
"Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, for the past several decades, food-processing companies have also been adding salicylates to foods as preservatives. This rise in the commercial use of salicylates has been found to correlate with a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by participants in our twenty-year study. Recently, food-processing companies have found that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods. With this new use for salicylates, we can expect a continued steady decline in the number of headaches suffered by the average citizen of Mentia."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The summary looks really reasonable and appealing in explaining the reduction of headache caused by the usage of salicylates as preservatives in food. However, the conclusion is made from unwarranted assumptions and requires further evidence to justify the results.
First of all, the correlation of headache drop and the higher usage of salicylates in food is drawn from the twenty-year study. Nevertheless, none of the details of the study is revealed, so without knowing the quality and the way the study was conducted, it creates lots of doubts about the findings. For example, how the residents are selected for the research? What are the control variables that are compared to testify the salicylates are the single variable that affect the decrease of the headache? All this information is vital to examine the validity of the study, so it is premature to accept the conclusion when no relevant information is provided.
Furthermore, even though the study is well-conducted, how do we know that the residents, who joined the research, all consume the food that contain salicylates? If some of them do have food with salicylates, while others are not, then how can we be sure that the ease of headache is contingent on the usage of salicylates? In other words, if residents have diverse dietary styles and consume food with large varieties, the validity of the correlation between the salicylates and the headache decline will be further weakened and make the conclusion more questionable. Therefore, it is pertinent to provide the information relating to the food consumption of residents who were in the research to explain the potential flaw of the study.
Last but not least, if the problems mentioned above are all solved, it is unclear how salicylates work to ease the headache, and no single finding of this mechanism is revealed from the summary. Hence, it is problematic to assume that with more salicylates, the headache syndrome will further decline. It is possible that the correlation between salicylates and headache is not formed due to the consumption quantity of salicylates, but the type of salicylates that are used in food. If that’s the case, the salicylates of flavor-additive type may not create the same effect on headache of preservative-type. Then the assumption of a further drop of the headache will be rejected. In other words, when no related details of the mechanism of salicylates are provided, it is difficult to convince the audience with the conclusion that is claimed by the author.
To sum up, the lack of the explanation of how the study was conducted, and the missing examination of the dietary diversity that may harm the validity of the research, as well as the incorrect assumption based on unclear mechanism produced by salicylates all weaken the conclusion of the summary and require information respectively before the final conclusion is made.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 473 350
No. of Characters: 2373 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.664 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.017 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.986 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 169 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.278 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.867 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.944 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.36 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.104 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, look, may, nevertheless, really, so, then, therefore, well, while, for example, as well as, first of all, in other words, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2437.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 473.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15221987315 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66353547975 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.08764501722 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.435517970402 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 790.2 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.9819466517 57.8364921388 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 135.388888889 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2777777778 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.77777777778 5.70786347227 171% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.260280957591 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0922287538634 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0597422516427 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.149862403947 0.128457276422 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0481742706832 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.89 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.