The nonsmokers got ninety-one per cent in their entrance
examinations and sixty-nine per cent in their first two years in
college, while only four per cent were failures. In this respect Dr.
Meylan thinks there is a distinct relation between smoking and
scholarship.
Of the same set of students forty-seven per cent of the smokers won
places on varsity athletic teams, while only thirty-seven per cent
of the nonsmokers could get places.
If the next to the last sentence had read, "Smoking therefore seems to
be a cause of low scholarship," what should you think of the reasoning?
30. Criticize the reasoning in the following portion of an argument for
prohibition:
Dr. Williams says, "We find no evidence that the prohibition laws
have in the past been effective in diminishing the consumption of
alcoholic beverages." ... The absence of logic in Dr. Williams's
conclusion will be readily seen by substituting the homicide evil
and the greed evil for the liquor evil in his argument.
Since its establishment the United States has sought to remedy with
prohibition the homicide evil. Every state has laws with severe
penalties prohibiting murder. And yet the number of homicides in
the United States has steadily increased until the number in 1910
was eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five.
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