Please review my GRE argument essay.

[Grewal]

The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist.

“Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This research of mine proves that Dr. Field’s conclusion about Tertain village culture is invalid and thus the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid as well. The interview-centered method that my team of graduate students is currently using in Tertia will establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other island cultures.”

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strenghten the argument.

 

Anthropologist Dr. Karp says that Dr. Field’s conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid and so is the observation-centered approach to studying cultures. This argument is flawed as it contains causal, analogical and statistical errors, which once corrected will unravel the argument, thereby proving that its assumptions and implications are incorrect.

Firstly, Dr. Karp after interviewing some children living in a group of islands that include Tertia finds that the children spoke more about their parents than other adults in the village. This he says proves that Dr. Field’s conclusion that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents is invalid. Dr. Karp hereby commits a causal error. Just because children spoke more about their biological parents than other adults in the village doesn’t mean they weren’t parented by the whole village. Dr. Karp provides little explanation as to how he reached this particular conclusion. Had he provided more information on who spent how much time on raising the children, his argument would have been stronger.

Secondly, Dr. Karp commits the analogical error, saying that since he proved Dr. Field’s conclusion about the village wrong, he has proved the observation-centered approach to studying cultures wrong. This statement does not hold water. The observation-centered approach must be broad-based and could have been used correctly by several anthropologists in the past. In order to make such a strong statement, Dr. Karp should have provided more data and explained how he thinks this approach is wrong, typically taking a systematic approach and studying the technique closely, such as its methodoly.

Lastly, Dr. Karp doesn’t say anything about the size of the sample of interviews his team has collected. If the size is too small or not representative enough of the whole village, his findings will prove to be incorrect. Further, the methodology used by his team of graduate students has not been discussed; it could be possible that they asked the wrong questions to the children, not asking them more about the time they spent with their biological parents. This shows that there are plenty of gaps in the argument, which if rectified will illustrate that Dr. Karp’s argument lacks substance and hence is flawed.

As pointed out, these errors are serious, which if not corrected can result in one making wrong conclusions. Until and unless, Dr. Karp systematically provides considerably more information, we cannot make any statement about whether or not Dr. Field’s conclusion about children in Tertia being raised by the entire village is false.