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

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

In this article, it is stated that any of companies, to achieve prosperity, should hire only people needing limited sleep. The author has come to this conclusion based on an assumed causal relationship between success of companies and sleep of employees. While this argument seems to be convincing at first glance, scrutiny reveals that it lends little credible support to this recommendation.

First, the author’s reasoning heavily relies on the assumption that the study regarding advertising executives is reliable and representative. However, no evidence is provided to rule out the possibility that 300 respondents might be insufficient and make up only a minority of all the executives, then it is unwarranted to draw any conclusions. Furthermore, it is equally likely that these respondents are inclined to report less sleeping time by lying, for them to leave a hard-working impression on their superiors. If either of the circumstances prove to be true, then this argument does not hold water.

Secondly, even if the number of sleeping time reported by these executives are reliable, the author unfairly assumes that it is less amount of sleep needed by executives that lead to the success of their firms. However, common sense tells us that not only executives, but also other employees would contribute to prosperity of firms. Furthermore, even if executives might make a greater contribution to the development of their corporations, the success can be readily explained by other plausible factors, such as efficient management of administrators or creative ideas about their products. If any of these scenarios has merit, then the soundness of the argument is undermined.

Finally, even if those assumptions mentioned above are valid, the recommendation may still not be advisable, because the author too hastily assumes that the phenomenon in advertising business is comparable to that in other business. In other words, circumstances from one industry can be used to make generalization and predictions about the other. Perhaps some industries need employees to have enough sleep to make themselves more creative and energetic during working hours. Likewise, it is unwarranted that the author directly applies circumstances of executives to other kinds of employments. In short, without additional evidence, the author cannot depend on this limited evidence to justify his argument.

In sum, this argument, as it stands now, is unconvincing due to its reliance on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions. To justify this conclusion, it is essential to provide more information to verify these assumptions und rule out other possibilities.