Blog #2

1. “One glass of beetroot juice a day will significantly reduce blood pressure in patients with high blood pressure.”
1. Major Premise: One glass of beetroot juice a day will significantly decrease your blood pressure, if you have high blood pressure.
2. Minor Premise: Katie has high blood pressure.
3. Conclusion: Therefore, Katie can reduce her blood pressure by drinking a glass of beetroot juice everyday.

4. This argument is valid because Katie has high blood pressure and all people with high blood pressure can decrease their blood pressure by drinking beetroot juice(according to this argument). However, it is not true because you cannot directly correlate beetroot juice and decreased B.P. in one study. Who knows if it really works for everyone, or anyone really.

5.

P: If you drink one glass of beetroot juice everyday

Q: your B.P. will decrease significantly(if you have high B.P.)

6.

~P if you do not drink one glass of beetroot juice everyday

~Q your B.P. will not decrease

1. If ~P-->~Q
2. ~P

1. This is a tautology. However, it does not make sense in real life because your high blood pressure could decrease from something other than beetroot juice.
2. No it does not. ^^^
3. They can help support the validity of an argument but not whether it is true or not.

7.

a. The source was not very reliable, it made claims on something that they had only done one study on.

b. This is a recent publication but that doesn’t mean it’s reliable.

c. The premise does not tell us why the beetroot works, nor does it have proof that we can correlate drinking beetroot juice and lower B.P.

d. Wasn’t an advertisement, so I’m not sure if there was a hidden agenda.

e. The big picture is the amazing powers of beetroot rather than the issues regarding high B.P.

8. I think the argument is an example of the False Cause fallacy because I'm sure someone has decided to drink beetroot juice everyday and then noticed a decrease in their high blood pressure, but we do not have enough evidence to correlate drinking beetroot juice and decreasing high B.P.

9. I think this experiment sort of helped me think more critically about media information. I think it is really important to try and uncover what an article/reading is trying to say. Are they advertising or just trying to inform? I think it’s also important to check several sources and see if the results match up. It is not smart to read one article and assume it is true.