TOPIC: ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.
"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
WORDS: 584 TIME: 0:29:00 DATE: 2007-8-10
In this argument the author comes to the conclusion that the Mason River will change to be clean and the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River. To justify the conclusion, the author points out that residents complaint about th4e quality of water in the river and they seldom use it. The author also points out that plans to clean up Mason River have been announced by the agency responsible for rivers in their region. Close scrutiny of this argument reveals that it is unconvincing in several aspects.
To begin with, the author unfairly assumes that people in Mason City rarely use the Mason River is due to that they think the water in the river is not clean. The only evidence the author gives is that there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, yet it is insufficient to prove his poor assumption. It is quite possible that only a small percent of residents there complain about the water quality, but the majority of people are satisfied about it or pay no attention to it at all. Perhaps due to some other reasons, such as that they consider it dangerous to do water sports in the river for it is too deep, they seldom use the Mason River. Without ruling out all other reasons that may lead to the rare use of the river, the author cannot convince me that after the river is cleaned up people will tend to use if for recreational activity.
