Critical Thinking Week 7

Medical Marijuana

I believe in the article "Medical Marijuana", the author used inductive reasoning. I think the author used inductive reasoning because the article didn't state facts. The article actually stated thoughts and opinions. For example, the author first started off with talking about how he worked in medical marijuana clinic, so already, this is telling you, and this is what he saw. This was not a set up study. A study has to have volunteers and it has to be monitored for a set amount of time and there needs to be a conclusion. Another part in the article that supports that this is inductive reasoning, is that the author talks about how he feels if marijuana should be legal, then it would have been legalized years ago. Basically, the author is stating his strong opinions.

In conclusion, this article is inductive reasoning. I went over two examples. One example was the author stating his thoughts and the second was the author giving his opinions. The author had a great thought process while putting the article together. He attacked the analogy. Especially with the ending paragraph "If the big players in the industry had significant potential gains from medical marijuana, it would have been legalized at the federal level years ago." (Article: Medical Marijuana By Scott M. Arden, PhD, Providence, Rl) He did give a small biased generalization because he worked in a medical marijuana clinic, so he is telling what happened at that ONE clinic. He's generalizing that all are like that clinic. As you can tell, this has inductive reasoning all throughout.