essay - GMAT: Argument 17

The following appeared in an article in a consumer-products magazine:

"Two of today's best-selling brands of full-strength prescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid, Acid-Ease and Pepticaid, are now available in milder nonprescription forms. Doctors have written 76 million more prescriptions for full-strength Acid-Ease than for full-strength Pepticaid. So people who need an effective but milder nonprescription medication for the relief of excess stomach acid should choose Acid-Ease."

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

Answer:
The article announces that two nonprescription medications for excess stomach acid are now released, and then the author concludes that one of them, Acid-Ease, is superior to the other, Pepticaid, by citing a statistic data, how many doctors have written the prescription more than the other. This conclusion, however, has two serious flaws, so that it fails to convince the readers.

First, the most important, the author doesn't show the correlation between the prescription and nonprescription version. That is, without explanation of the difference or relationship, even though Acid-Ease has gained more doctor's supports for the prescription version, the readers can't judge whether Acid-Ease for the nonprescription version remain its strengths of the prescription version or not. For instance, if the ingredient of the nonprescription version is much different
from one of the prescription version, it can be inferred that the strength of prescription version is not available in the nonprescription version. Therefore, to strength the argument, the author should have explained characteristics of nonprescription medication and made the readers to be able to understand the
difference.

Second, although the author cites one statistical data, 76 million more prescriptions, which is a number that doctors have written for Acid-Ease compared to Pepticaid, this figure makes no sense without the following necessary information. First, the author should clearly articulate the timeframe of the survey, say, the figure is for one year, or for all time. Then, the author should show a percentage
rather than a number so that the readers can judge how much Acid-Ease is supported by doctors. That is, if the market size of prescription for excess stomach acid is over 1 billion, the difference between Acid-Ease and Pepticaid can be considered quite small.

To sum up, although the author tries to convince the readers that Acid-Ease is a better choice even for nonprescription medication of excess stomach acid, since the argument has two serious flaws that I mentioned above, the author fails to make the conclusion reasonable.