¶ … employee theft has been reported within ten of the companies that have been our clients. In analyzing the security practices of these ten companies, we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work. In the future, therefore, we should recommend the use of such identification badges to all our clients"
This argument presents us with information, from which it derives a premise and makes a recommendation. The six years of research indicating no employee theft and the existence of the identification badges are the points that it starts with, and from this it derives the implied premise that employee theft is perfectly correlated with the issuance of identification badges. That is to say, employee theft exists or does not exist based on whether or not there are identification badges used. The conclusion is that the methodology of preventing theft through the use of identification badges should be recommended to all clients, as it is presumed that all wish to eliminate theft.
Our first question is: is the research accurate? If no theft is reported, theft may very well not exist. However, the reports could be erroneous. This could be due to either inaccuracy or a deliberate obfuscation of the existence of theft. How likely is it that either one of these is the case? This depends on who conducts the research and whether or not there is quality control in the collection of data. The research...
If the latter is true, it must be determined if they have a vested interest in the diligent collection of data on past incidents of theft. For instance, if the organization conducting the research is a security firm responsible for managing incidents of theft when they occur, one would expect it to maintain comprehensive records. If the clients are advised but not required to report incidents of theft, many such incidents could be left unnoticed. If, for instance, the reporting firm is basing its knowledge of theft at the client companies on officially filed police reports, these may not accurately reflect theft.
The premise implied is that the existence of ID badges and the prevention of theft are directly correlated. This may not be the case; for instance, the clients could have never reported incidents of theft even before the issuance of badges. By noting that they analyzed the security practices of the firms involved, they imply that the ten firms employ several methods of theft prevention. If, for instance, nine of the firms use security cameras and the tenth doesn't have any way of monitoring theft, and the security cameras are an effective deterrent, the ID badges could be irrelevant. All ten firms could also employ armed guards and retinal scans; we have little or no knowledge of the additional or complementary security measures that these firms take. The reporting firm makes the…
