Study blindfoldedly without analyzing the assumptions made in it will certainly bring one's downfall

The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.

"A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

The author's view about the relation between the amount of sleep needed by the executives and the success of their firms becomes biased by a recent study on certain executives which showed greater profit margins and faster growth by those executives who needs less than 6 hours of sleep and without even examining the fallacies of the study the author asserts that only such people should be hired.This study consists of many unstated assumptions which may not be tenable at all, rendering the study to be a waste of time.

First, the study is based upon the reporting of executives about their sleeping needs, but there is no mention about their credibility, or if the executives were observed for certain period of time.What if the reporting is false?Some people have the habit of lying and there is a possibility here too. Also, executives reported their sleeping "needs", but that doesn't mean that they sleep only for that particular time, or they may oversleep too .

Second, the study does not state the amount of work given to these executives.Whether or not it was the same as those needing more sleep? The work may have been relatively minuscule compared to those needing more sleep, and that may have lead to the successful completion of the work, inturn making it succesful.

Third, the study is conducted on an advertising executives that obviously cannot be generalized.Certain executives does not represent all the businesses but only the which they work in.

All in all, I would say that following such study blindfoldedly, without analysing the assumptions made in it will certainly bring one's downfall, and advising others to follow the same is not appreciable

This is all I could come up with, in the 30 min deadline.

this is not a nice approach of questioning a work. The data are not "trustable", "legitimate" or "valid" would be better choices of words.


this is a very long sentence, and the absence of commas made it really difficult to read.


you could use the words "records", "the available documents", "evidence", "proofs", and the like, instead of repeating one word.


you could also use the word "subjects", cause those male and female executives are subjects in this study.


can u see the repetition?


hope this helps.
Cheers,
Ahmad