A pet food company recalled 4 million pounds of pet food in response to complaints that pets that had consumed the food experienced vomiting, lethargy, and other signs of illness. After the recall, the pet food company tested samples from the recalled food and determined that all chemicals found in the food were chemicals that are approved for use in pet food. Thus, the recalled food was not responsible for these symptoms, and the company should not devote further resources to the investigation.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
A pet food company recalled 4 million pounds of pet food in response to complaints that pets that consumed the food experienced vomiting, lethargy, and other signs of illness. Company further states that recalled food was not responsible for these symptoms, and it should not devote further resources to the investigation. To bolster this claim the company states that the pet food test samples were taken from recalled food and determined that all chemicals found in the food were chemicals that are approved for use in pet food. The argument is unconvincing since it makes illogical propositions and unwarranted assumptions, that when put to perspective fails to withstand sustained rational scrutiny.
To begin with the argument assumes that food sample taken from recalled food have the chemicals which all are approved by the authority to use in the pet food without providing data on the sample size and experimental details not explained in above argument. For example, argument states that 4 million pounds of pet food recalled but no evidence is given the amount of pet food taken for the investigation, it might be possible that small amount
of pet food taken in the experimentation and based on the result, company makes such claims; evidence regarding experimentation procedure is necessary to bolster the assumption in above argument. Therefore, it is illogical to accept that tested sample from recalled food contains chemicals which are approved without providing evidence regarding test sample size and experimentation details.
The pet company assumes that the experiment done by it detects all the chemicals presented in the pet food without providing further data to corroborate this assumption. It can be argued that experimentation done by the company to detect the chemicals in the pet food is not up to the mark or is of a low quality for example it might be possible that certain chemicals used in making of pet food when used individually are benign but when mixed make new compound that is detrimental for the dog health and experiment done to detect chemicals in the pet food fails to detect such kind of chemicals. Therefore, data should be provided on the experimentation done by the company to detect all the chemicals in pet food.
It can be further argued that it is not specified in the argument that whether company tested the samples of pet food on the dogs in the labs and monitored their health or check any malicious effect on the dog by intaking of pet food or not. It is important to use the pet food as experiment on dogs in lab before releasing such product on market but no such detail is given in the above argument regarding it.
There are many unwarranted assumptions that significantly undermine the effectiveness of the argument and make it open to censure. As a reader or an analyst one cannot agree with this argument which uses terms and data in crude manner and it at times of distorting fact at the cost of objective and rational analysis.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 504 350
No. of Characters: 2461 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.738 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.883 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.822 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 33.6 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.678 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.467 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.432 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.7 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.158 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 447, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
..., it might be possible that small amount of pet food taken in the experimentation...
^^^^
Line 4, column 67, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...experimentation and based on the result, company makes such claims; evidence rega...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, regarding, so, therefore, for example, kind of, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2505.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 504.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 4.97023809524 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.73813722054 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8759296097 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.375 0.468620217663 80% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 800.1 705.55239521 113% => 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: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 36.0 22.8473053892 158% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 87.610484183 57.8364921388 151% => OK
Chars per sentence: 178.928571429 119.503703932 150% => OK
Words per sentence: 36.0 23.324526521 154% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.563745656023 0.218282227539 258% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.254390669109 0.0743258471296 342% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.198155158747 0.0701772020484 282% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.326052963673 0.128457276422 254% => Maybe some contents are duplicated.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.193321569231 0.0628817314937 307% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 20.0 14.3799401198 139% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 34.94 48.3550499002 72% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 17.3 12.197005988 142% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.14 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 16.4 11.1389221557 147% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.