 A number of authors have expressed the view that the Williams-Stove argument is only valid if the sample S is drawn randomly from the population of possible samples—i.e., that any sample is as likely to be drawn as any other (Brown 1987; Will 1948; Giaquinto 1987). Sometimes this is presented as an objection to the application of the proportional syllogism. The claim is that the proportional syllogism is only valid if a is drawn randomly from the population of Ms. However, the response has been that there is no need to know that the sample is randomly drawn in order to apply the syllogism (Maher 1996; Campbell 2001; Campbell &amp; Franklin 2004). Certainly if you have reason to think that your sampling procedure is more likely to draw certain individuals than others—for example, if you know that you are in a certain location where there are more of a certain type—then you should not apply the proportional syllogism. But if you have no such reasons, the defenders claim, it is quite rational to apply it. Certainly it is always possible that you draw an unrepresentative sample—meaning one of the few samples in which the sample frequency does not match the population frequency—but this is why the conclusion is only probable and not certain.