Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than

The author of the statement above does not recognize the observation method of Dr. Field as reliable as the interview based method in acquiring accurate information. This conclusion is based on the premise that the results of the observation method, seemingly shows a discrepancy with the results of the interviews results, and the author believes that the last method results are the accurate ones. The argument is replete with ambiguous points, each raising questions that needs to be addressed by the author.

First, the author needs to ask whether the rearing policy of the children remained same throughout 20 years. As a significant amount of time is passed, it is possible that back in two decades ago, children were reared by the entire village rather than biological parents and now the trend in nurturing the children is more concerned by their biological parents. If this is the case, then there would be no discrepancy between the results and both can hold true.

Secondly, it needs to be asked whether relying only on the fact that children are more speaking about their biological parents shows that they are not reared by the entire village. As detailed information are missed by the author, it is possible that children speak about their parents only because they are more passionate about their biological parents while there are kept by the whole village. Furthermore the nature of the interviews are not clear. It is possible that the content of the reviews, indirectly or directly makes the children to speak of their parents rather than the whole village. Without ruling out these possibilities, the rearing of children by the biological parents in Tertia would be questionable.

Finally, even if all the previous answers give credence to the author’s conclusion, still it should be asked that is it enough to only resort to two cases in order to entirely refute a method and suggest another one. As the samples are so few, the author is prone to make a hasty generalization; it is possible that in a bigger scale, neither of the methods works properly and a combination of methods may be needed to obtain accurate information.

In short, as discussed, the argument has many ambiguous points defying any certain evaluation. The questions, whose answers would illustrate the argument remained unaddressed by the author. Therefore, the conclusion which is based on such an inconclusive argument cannot be tenable.
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