Cetadone, a new therapy for the treatment of addiction to the illegal drug tarocaine, has been proven effective in a study by Regis Hospital in the western part of New Portsmouth. The study involved local tarocane addicts who responded to a newspaper ad offering free treatment. Participants who received cetadone and counseling were 40% more likely to recover than were patients assigned to a control group and receiving only counseling. conventional therapies have only a 20% recovery rate. Therefore the best way to reduce deaths from tarocaine overdoes throughout all of New Portsmouth would be to fund cetadone therapy for all tarocaine addicts.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to determine whether the argument is reasonable. Be sure to explain what affects the answers to these questions would have on the validity of the argument.


The author recommends the funding of cetadone for all tarocaine addicts, claiming the new treatment will reduce deaths from overdose throughout all of New Portsmouth. The author bases his logic on some fallacious grounds that must be strengthened through answering some critical questions.

The author bases his argument solely on the results of a study. Although the data he or she provides has to be taken as is, some parts of the study are questionable.

The first concerns sampling method of the study: Is the sample in the study representative of the population? Because the final recommendation is for "all of New Portsmouth," the sample should be appropriately representative of the whole population of tarocaine addicts in New Portsmouth. The author states that participants of the study responded to a newspaper ad offering free treatment. The sample was not randomly selected from the pool. Participants opted in. This could bias the sample accordingly. Perhaps people who were poorer volunteered, which may have biased the participants, in that the sample gathered may have less healthier diets, confounding the results of the study. Showing that, despite the sampling method, the sample gathered was random enough to represent the population would strengthen the author's recommendation.

A control group was used, differentiating no drug use and drug use. However, the author does not mention that the control group received a placebo. Could the results have been a placebo effect? The patients receiving the drug may have been biased if they knew they were receiving the new treatment. If the control group were not given a placebo, then the author's recommendation relies on weak evidence, because we are not certain that the increased recovery is attributable to cetadone.

The recommendation seems overly confident that cetadone therapy is the absolute panacea for all tarocaine addicts of New Portsmouth. Will Cetadone work for all tarocaine addicts in all of New Portsmouth? The study results blatantly tell us that cetadone did not work for 100% of participants. Less than half, 40%, of the participants who received Cetadone recovered from this addiction.  It is unwarranted to claim that this therapy will work for all tarocaine addicts of New Portsmouth.

Details about the sampling method and how the study was conducted will need to be outlined to assess the validity of the author's recommendation.


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comments:
did not leave enough time to finish with flourish.
- missed some details in reading the prompt that would have given more solid support points
(study was conducted on western part of New Portsmouth -- recommendation applies to all of New Portsmouth -- is this fine to extrapolate?)
did not finish reading the instructions ...