A recently issued twenty-year study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia investigated the possible therapeutic effect of consuming salicylates. Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, food-processing companies also add salicylates to foods as preservatives. The twenty-year study found a correlation between the rise in the commercial use of salicylates and a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by study participants. At the time when the study concluded, food-processing companies had just discovered that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods, and, as a result, many companies plan to do so. Based on these study results, some health experts predict that residents of Mentia will suffer even fewer headaches in the future.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
At first glance, it seems that experts predicting that Mentia residents will suffer fewer headaches in the future is logical. Upon closer inspection, their prognostication, though based on the results of recently completed research and food-processing company plans, raises many questions. These require corroborating evidence for scrutinizing the possible implications; the argument is perhaps still valid or made weaker.
A first question pertains to the validity of the recently completed twenty year academic paper. The author mentions a positive correlation between increasing commercial substance use and declining average number of headaches. Looking more closely at this conclusion, more relevant information is required: for example, the methodology that is used, the number of participants included and followed-up; it needs knowing if each of the respondents actually developed the outcome of not having headaches. So, there could have been 100 people inspected in the intervening years with consuming the specific pill and the exact numbers as a proportion of the total of each of those hundred people developing multiple outcomes is not known; these could be that they dropped out, some developed headaches and some of them did not. Examining the accuracy, if a greater number of the hypothetical hundred people developed headaches or actually dropped out of the research, then the conclusions are not valid and the health expert prediction is wrong.
Another question is about the proper dosage of the particular artificially added ingredient as additives for lowering headaches. The food companies plan on increasing foodstuffs with Salicylates: the business managers only base this decision on hastily implementing the scientific paper's recommendation. They need to know consumer preferences and characteristics; gleaning data and facts from primary surveys, the bosses could understand if customers like ingesting natural materials like aspirin for reducing intensity and frequency of headaches. Moreover, scrutinizing other scholarly articles for results based on similar customer population, scientific method, etc. would give information about gathering and analyzing germane data for new product line. Say for example, other beverage companies created a soft drink with aspirin or something similar and customers responded well; the company leaders acquired the facts from randomized trials administering a placebo to other participants with no headaches. This company perhaps did not struggle to get the ethical approval for completing scientific paper in this way.
Finally, it needs exploring if there are other factors which contribute towards declining average number of headaches. Even if the academic paper conclusion is correct, there would also be other variables which increase the intensity, frequency or even duration of headaches. Moreover, self-reported measures are not necessarily objective- a person with a serious headache at the start as compared to another might say that he feels a throbbing pain but the other person perhaps states that he only feels brain fog. They possibly have produced medical documentation which suggests that both of them actually suffered head pain at the beginning of the research. It is not always patently obvious that one of the personalities being examined declares that he is not taking some other substance while being observed for salicylates. The specific person could secretly be ingesting aspirin in an unknown intravenous route. The validity is undermined and cannot be extended to other headache-suffering groups.
In conclusion, there are many questions which the scholarly paper's methods and conclusions raise, some of them include the validity of specific method used, the dosage requirement for new foodstuffs and the possibility of additional factors which influence whether respondents developed headache or not. If these implications are not closely examined, the argument falls apart. The prediction of lower number of headaches could therefore be wrong.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 600 350
No. of Characters: 3385 1500
No. of Different Words: 312 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.949 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.642 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.985 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 271 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 235 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 177 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 114 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.54 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.708 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.268 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.469 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.084 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 282, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'papers'' or 'paper's'?
Suggestion: papers'; paper's
... on hastily implementing the scientific papers recommendation. They need to know consu...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, if, look, moreover, so, still, then, therefore, well, while, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3459.0 2260.96107784 153% => OK
No of words: 600.0 441.139720559 136% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.765 5.12650576532 112% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.94923200384 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.05226646208 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 312.0 204.123752495 153% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.52 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 1084.5 705.55239521 154% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 72.2518262745 57.8364921388 125% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.36 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.96 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.102769470839 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.031836494528 0.0743258471296 43% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0372750767979 0.0701772020484 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0661749597618 0.128457276422 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0287267867266 0.0628817314937 46% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.7 14.3799401198 123% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 30.2 48.3550499002 62% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 16.42 12.5979740519 130% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.7 8.32208582834 117% => OK
difficult_words: 185.0 98.500998004 188% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.