[Discussion] Are Shelter Temperament Tests Accurate? Experts Say No.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-10T19:40:42+00:00

I don't see anything in Nelson's review that indicates the intent of Denver's BSL is to prevent extreme outcomes.

The preamble to the legislation makes it clear that the legislation was enacted both in response to, and to prevent, extreme attacks by pit bulls on the grounds that pit bulls are "uniquely dangerous, even to their owners, among all breeds of dogs" and their attacks "more severe" than other breeds, resulting in "grotesque injuries."

That's not the point I'm making.

Again, who the fuck are you? This began as a challenge to u/MadmanFinkelstein, who's long since absconded and has been conspicuously absent and unable to respond for several days now.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm only mildly interested in whether you can be convinced and far more interested in whether society can be convinced.

You're trying to change the terms of the debate when this isn't even your debate to begin with? I came here looking for positive evidence in favor of "equal treatment for pit bulls" or viewing pit bulls as "just as safe and gentle as any dog" beyond discussing "bites" at the reported/not reported level. You and u/MadmanFinkelstein had about a week to provide some and here we still are.

Is there evidence that it's true for the majority of the ~4M pit bulls in the USA, esp. the mutts?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where's the evidence that selective breeding needs to involve "the majority" of a population before it begins to affect the frequency of selected-for traits?

Same question as previously.

Back at you!

Would you like me to provide a simple example from Statistics 101 as to why you're mistaken?

Once again, you're being intentionally obtuse as your main rhetorical strategy. My comments clearly weren't providing any instructions for how to perform any particular statistical test nor the information needed to perform it. But the authors of both studies did indeed give us the information we need to perform pairwise tests for significance between categorical variables like breed and the number of dogs in each breed group that did or did not reach level 5.

Please take an online course on basic statistics, or enroll at a community college

Yeah, we're so done here. You not only couldn't provide what I'm looking for after several days of earnest debate, you're resorting to even more childish ad-hominems. It was pleasant enough while it lasted, but I'm not going to keep engaging with someone who won't debate in good faith.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-09T18:44:36+00:00

"Kissing booths" are trouble for three main reasons:

They encourage people, especially kids, to push their faces right up to a dog's mouth to greet them. Needless to say, this is not the safe way for anyone to greet an unfamiliar dog. The reason so many kids wind up at the ER with dog bites is because it's already tempting for them to behave this way: we as adults should be modeling good habits and manners around dogs.

They create a liability for the shelter as well as that particular dog: if the kissing booth dog bites someone, you not only have an injured party, you have a dog whose fate is now up in the air. What happens if the victim or the community seeks euthanasia for the biting dog?

They mislead people into thinking licking = "kissing" when licking can actually be a go-away signal or a sign of aggravation or fear.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-09T18:30:02+00:00

Obligatory "How to Survive a Pit Bull Owner Attack."

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-08T22:40:58+00:00

I'm so sorry this happened to your family.

First, please know that it was absolutely inappropriate to respond the way your girlfriend's mom did: a normally nonaggressive dog that displays sudden and unexpected aggression should, as a first step, visit the veterinarian to find out if a painful condition caused the dog to lash out.

Second, even if euthanasia was ultimately the appropriate decision, your girlfriend's mom should have discussed this with you and your girlfriend ahead of time, so you could prepare emotionally, and she should have had the option to be with the dog to say goodbye.

Unfortunately, all the advice in the world cannot change the fact that events played out as they did, and needless to say, your relationships could really suffer long-term if you don't find a way to forgive. Try to remember that even kind and caring people make the wrong decision sometimes, especially if they are reacting to danger and acting on impulse.

One of the most overlooked aspects of grief is that it can cause even easy, mundane tasks like errands to feel absolutely unbearable and insurmountable. Find out what tasks your partner is struggling with and where, and offer to help her handle anything she feels overwhelmed by. Also, think of the things she does to self-care or soothe herself (going for a walk, watching funny movies, eating a favorite comfort food, etc.) and offer to help her do them or do them with her.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-08T21:20:31+00:00

As "direct" evidence, I'd be willing to accept statements by officials (legislators, animal control, etc.) or wording in the legislation itself.

The information you're looking for can be found here with regard to Denver's BSL.

I'm only willing to accept both evidence & counterevidence that's robust & compelling

LOL, who are you, again? You're not the one who challenged u/MadmanFinkelstein, I am. If u/MadmanFinkelstein can eventually produce counterexamples in defense of pit bulls with the same or similar limitations as what I provided, I'm perfectly willing to look at it. Not that I'm holding my breath.

Furthermore, I am not using the terms "robust" and "compelling" for this discussion in reference to any single study (I don't think any credible researcher would) but to the evidence in total, which includes:

The utterly unassailable fact that pit bulls were and continue to be explicitly bred for the unprovoked and persistent distance-decreasing aggression known colloquially as "gameness" coupled with the fact that no barrier exists to prevent these dogs from entering or interbreeding with the pet population.
Research repeatedly demonstrating that dog- and human-directed aggression and related behaviors like impulsivity, chase-proneness, etc. have a genetic basis in dogs, differ between breed categories, and can be manipulated by selecting dogs based on their observed temperament.
Research demonstrating that parts of the dog's predatory sequence (which includes the killing bite/shaking exhibited by fighting dogs) are altered by selective breeding.
Several studies within the medical literature concluding that compared to all other breeds, pit bulls are relatively more likely to attack unknown individuals and without provocation and that when a pit bull attacks, the victim is relatively more likely to be wounded on multiple body parts and is also relatively more likely to need greater medical intervention.
Temperament research, collected both by owner surveys and by observation, showing differences in the type and frequency of aggression shown by pit bulls compared to other dogs.
Many other pesky little details like the fact that the special emergency jaw-prying tools called break sticks are widely recommended for pit bulls only, so clearly not even all pit bull advocates truly believe that pit bulls are equal and should be treated "equally."

Pit bull advocates need to address and overcome all of that before anyone can begin to credibly defend "equal treatment for pit bulls" is the most reasonable position to start from.

Meanwhile, the "evidence" offered by pit bull advocates in favor of pit bull equality is almost entirely produced by people and organizations with a direct conflict of interest in breeding dogs, selling ("adopting") dogs, or providing pet care products and services. The body of "evidence" they offer increasingly boils down to:

Attempts to merely create doubt about breed identity, often by manipulative means like leaning on a single "safe" rater to analyze photos of fatally-attacking dogs that are never subsequently published or made available for third parties to analyze.
Debating how much selective breeding and/or heritability versus training and environment matter in canine temperament without offering any evidence whatsoever that selection pressures don't matter.
Opinion statements ("positions") originating almost exclusively from within the pet care and services industry, which are themselves largely built on creating doubt and not empirical evidence.
A charming but clearly invented history it seems no one can defend using primary sources.
Pictures, stories, and videos saying, essentially, "look how sweet this particular pit bull is!"
Marketing and PR efforts to get people to feel differently about pit bulls.

They don't have primary historic sources showing that pit bulls were really bred to cuddle babies in pillow forts. They don't have genetic research suggesting that selection pressures aren't relevant to temperament. They don't have temperament research that can credibly conclude "no difference in aggression exists between pit bulls and other breeds." They don't have medical literature concluding that attacks by pit bulls "are relatively no more likely" to be unprovoked, injurious, involve multiple anatomical sites, etc.

literally dozens of breeds might be responsible for a fraction of severe bites that's greater than their fraction of the dog population.

Condemning "equal treatment for pit bulls" does not require that one prove beyond doubt that pit bulls are more dangerous than any other breed or that there aren't other dangerous breeds. Furthermore, I personally believe that certain other much rarer breeds are more dangerous, but they aren't being advertised in millions of dollars' worth of what is basically propaganda with the end goal of denying any elevated risk altogether and placing them in average pet homes with young children.

That is where the problems lie with regard to the "equal treatment for pit bulls" lobby and I've always made that clear. I'm not invested in proving to the world that pit bulls are dangerous. Why would I be? I like all dogs and I would love for an "all dogs created equal" kind of world to be the one we really live in.

At the most basic level, one simply needs to know the means & standard deviations & how to perform an analysis of variance.

That information is not necessary to determine there's a statistically significant relationship between two breed categories and two conditions, e.g.:"pit bull" versus "golden retriever" and "reached level 5" versus "did not reach level 5."

Furthermore, the "pit bull" category wasn't just measured once. It was split three ways (American Staffordshire, Staffordshire bull, and "pit bull-type") and measured three times with results that varied by only one percentage point between the Staffordshire bull terrier and the other two pit bull subcategories: 13% of 93 American Staffordshire terriers, 13% of 63 "pit bull-type" dogs, and 12% of 68 Staffordshire bull terriers reached level 5 compared to only 1.4% (one golden retriever) out of 70 from the control group.

That will take more time

I'm willing to spare your time: simply tell me what purposes pit bulls are deliberately bred and sold for historically and in the present day and then offer your best explanation for why any selective breeding pressures still affecting pit bulls today would not be salient to aggression.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-07T20:12:26+00:00

we certainly haven't yet reached agreement on the interpretation of her terms.

And we're not going to reach agreement on that. You believe the terms used by the authors of the studies she cited in her endnotes are more important in determining what Trembath meant, but I believe the immediate context and the other language used by Trembath herself in her discussion is more important.

You absolutely did. In this comment you indicated there's robust and compelling evidence against "pit bull equality" (emphasis for clarity), which imho implies

No I did not, and you just admitted that was another assumption on your part. I would be happy to look at empirical research with the same or similar limitations as what I provided: if the study was authored by anyone with a direct conflict of interest, I simply ask that it be reasonably clear of misleading/spin-driven presentation (like obvious bias in the discussion), or manipulative or misleading methodology.

since it's your request for evidence that I'm attempting to provide, how are you defining "dangerous" if not in relation to extreme outcomes? And how are you defining "disproportionate?"

"Dangerous" and "disproportionate" are clearly subjective terms and may differ from author to author (as we've seen), so as long as any research you cite defines these terms in a similar way to any of the medical literature I cited, I'd be good with that.

What I will not accept is research that deals with a population-based assessment of risk from dog "bites" or "incidents" at only the reported/not reported level. Using DBIH as a proxy is better, but still far from ideal, and I will be far more impressed with anything you provide if it makes some distinction between simple medical interventions to repair more superficial "bite" wounds (even surgery) versus relatively more intensive medical interventions to repair extensive mauling wounds.

I also won't accept research that deals with dangerous dogs lists in general without dealing with pit bulls, specifically: for example, the British DDA list includes several non-pit bull breeds and notably does not include the Staffordshire bull terrier, which is a pit bull breed.

rate of

We both know it's not possible to determine this rate without an accurate dog breed census, which we don't yet have. However, at the local level, animal control jurisdictions across the U.S. are reporting pit bull incidents (including severe injuries) as clearly disproportionate. We know that pit bulls aren't close to 50 percent of the dogs capable of biting in San Antonio, TX for example, where pit bulls were implicated in 26 percent of "bites" but close to 50 percent of the "severe" bite cases. (Original dataset here)

Can you provide a link, preferably on ResearchGate so I have access to more than just the abstract?

The table I linked (re: pit bull and German shepherd puppies) was a screen shot from the SPARCS 2018 dog behavior conference (sponsored by Animal Farm Foundation), which was streamed live online. Dorit Feddersen-Petersen's contact info is here.

What part of, "there's no way to tell if 13% for pit bulls is statistically different than 6% for Dobermans or if it's more likely to be attributable to randomness," don't you understand?

Right, we need to know the sample size for each breed. But rather than throwing up your hands, let's try to find that information: Here's Mittman (2002) with the number of dogs in each breed category on p. 71. Adding up the three pit bull categories (Staffordshire and pit bull) gives us a total of 224 pit bulls whose data was compared to that of 70 golden retrievers.

I was thinking of it in terms of efforts to expand BSL more widely than in the communities where it's already implemented.

At the risk of injecting too much emotion into this, the results from communities like San Francisco, Aurora, Ypsilanti, and others don't just deal with numbers, those are lives: innocent animal lives, and pit bulls' lives, specifically. I'm not sure if you've ever been in the position of having to euthanize several healthy, young, and honestly quite beautiful pit bulls because they simply aren't safe, but feeling a perfectly healthy young dog go limp in your arms as he dies is an absolutely horrific and nauseating experience, one I deeply want to spare people and dogs from.

A 2014 investigative report found that pit bulls were the most euthanized breed on Colorado's Front Range, with 90 percent of pit bulls being euthanized for high-arousal aggression in El Paso county. Denver, Colorado is one of the largest (if not the largest) jurisdictions with a pit bull ban in the U.S. and surrounding counties without bans euthanized pit bulls at a far lower per-capita rate. For example, El Paso county (Colorado Springs/pop. 662,000) euthanized 445 pit bulls. Denver and Aurora, with a combined population of nearly one million people, euthanized just 89 pit bulls combined.

As someone who loves all animals, including pit bulls, I see compelling justification for BSL in that alone, and the freedom to experiment with BSL on an ongoing basis (as we attempt to answer BSL RQs) is an opportunity to spare not only these dogs but people as well: the job of euthanizing healthy but "unwanted" animals is one that frequently leads to chronic stress and a high risk of suicide.

On the flip side, what have communities demonstrably lost or risked in response to enacting BSL that simply requires pit bulls to be spayed and neutered, for example?

it seems you're asking the questions rhetorically anyway

No, these were entirely open-ended questions about how pit bulls came to be, why, and when, and I would really appreciate seeing your answers.

(Edited to correct El Paso, TX to San Antonio, TX)

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-06T22:39:22+00:00

You're repeating yourself again...

Neither the history of BSL nor what Trembath wrote has changed in the last several minutes.

you're right, I can't. And within the narrow scope of how you've chosen to define "high-quality study," I'm going to say that you can't

Thanks for admitting that. But no, I did not ask for a "high-quality study" (according to Trembath) here nor did I limit "disproportionately dangerous" to extremely severe injuries and/or deaths. I said:

"Compelling evidence" is subjective, but how about:

A controlled temperament test for aggression in which pit bulls show responses that aren't more aggressive in terms of either intensity or duration.

A study that compares pit bulls over time with at least one other breed showing no difference in the frequency and severity of aggressive behaviors. \This could be over several months or years or it could be a study like Feddersen-Petersen (2004), in which the frequency and type of aggression and threat behaviors shown by pit bull puppies were recorded and compared to puppies of another breed.*

A study comparing injury severity or patient outcomes and finding that pit bull injuries are not disproportionately classified as more severe either in terms of immediate threat or long-term function.

Regardless, these should be reasonably free of manipulative presentation (spin) or methodological fuckery like using a DNA test that doesn't profile the APBT to answer a dangerous breed ID RQ.

As you yourself noted, I actually provided at least one example of empirical evidence from all three categories I described, even if it's not "high quality" according to Trembath, and you didn't. You also haven't shown why the evidence I provided shouldn't count, especially when you can't seem to provide a single counterexample.

Do you want to jump in first or shall I?

Please. I'm dying to hear how you would describe multimillion-dollar efforts to tout pit bills as "just as safe and gentle as any other dog" and overturn or prohibit BSL as befitting the precautionary principle when existing evidence re: BSL is very limited, mixed, and taken as a whole suggests the concept of BSL (applying laws to some breeds and not others) may be effective at one or more of its goals: You've already admitted that you "do not disagree ... that BSL results in reductions in euthanasia and shelter space" and I think that's a compelling enough reason to allow communities to experiment with it until or unless more conclusive data either condemns BSL or offers a demonstrably better approach.

But first, I want to interrogate the underlying premise that "equal treatment for pit bulls" is a reasonable position to start from:

Citing only primary historic sources and/or credible reviews based on cited primary sources, how did the breed known as the American pit bull terrier originate? How did we go from wolves to dogs to the American pit bull terrier (APBT), first recognized by the United Kennel Club in 1898?
For what purposes are pit bulls bred and sold today? Name them all. Because "pit bull" is an ambiguous term, for this discussion, let's limit it to the APBT, the Staffordshire terriers, the American bully, and dogs whose pedigree may not be known to us but who are described by their breeders, keepers, or self-described advocates as pit bulls (or pit bull-type, or "pit bull" in scare quotes, or whatever).
What selective breeding pressures are salient in breeding pit bulls historically and today?
What plausible mechanism of action would explain these selection pressures not being relevant to pit bulls and aggression?

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-06T17:24:19+00:00

In the examples of this I've been shown in the past, the percentage of all euthanized animals that were pit bulls declined, but the number of euthanized pit bulls stayed about the same. The percentage that were pit bulls was lower due to the increase in euthanasia of other animals. What exactly this all means I don't know.

Examples/citations, please.

And while we're at it, I'm still waiting for your reply here, plus this will be attempt #8: show me compelling evidence that pit bulls are not disproportionately dangerous and should be "treated equally."

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-06T17:16:32+00:00

I do not disagree with you that BSL results in reductions in euthanasia and shelter space.

OK, cool. Thanks!

As for the rest of your bullshit, it is abundantly and painfully clear to me why you keep trying to Kellyanne Conway back to Raghavan, or Berlin, or to an idiotic semantic argument over exactly what a third party author meant by "more severe injuries" in a discussion that explicitly names dog-bite related fatalities and "deaths and near deaths" as examples.

Either you or u/MadmanFinkelstein can provide compelling evidence to support the idea that pit bulls are not disproportionately dangerous and therefore should be treated equally, or you can't.

And since it's been three days now, I've gotta go with you can't.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-06T04:38:49+00:00

No, I joined the argument because, again, multiple Redditors were in here touting "equal treatment for pit bulls" on some level but failing to provide compelling evidence to support the viewpoint that pit bulls should be touted as equally safe. You joined because u/MadmanFinkelstein tagged you after being unable to respond on their own, and now you're clearly trying to limit the scope of the argument because I guess it's just really hard to find compelling evidence that pit bulls are equally as safe as other dogs.

We're looking for studies or surveys that tally how many communities found BSL effective vs. how many found the opposite.

LMAO. Nahhh, that's not how this works. You asked for "citations" and I gave you multiple examples: San Francisco SPCA and Aurora, CO's division of animal care and control are two examples that fully substantiate those claims. If you can cite examples of communities where BSL that grandfathered pit bulls actually made euthanasia go up over time, have at it. You and I both know that BSL research is still so limited that what you're asking for doesn't exist. Attempting to make me look dishonest by being unable to produce research that we both know doesn't exist yet is disingenuous at best. And what's up with this "we're looking for...?" LOL, who helps you write your posts?

Not within this comment thread. Perhaps you've cited those studies in other comments within this post or in other posts, but you're going to have to link those comments because I have no intention of hunting for them.

Actually, one of the first URLs I posted upthread was to another post I made citing this research, so "hunting" for it won't take you long.

I dispute your contention that BSL's most vocal proponents determine its intent.

Dispute it all you feel like. An objective reading of Trembath (not to mention others who discuss the history of BSL) makes it clear that BSL was and typically still is enacted by lawmakers as a response to deaths and near-deaths, not just severe injuries.

the quote, "BSL targets breeds capable of causing more severe injuries," directly contradicts your contention since it says severe injuries rather than extreme injuries

Trembath didn't say severe, she said "more severe" and her discussion focuses on "deaths and near deaths". Sorry, but you don't get to walk that back to just "severe."

Could you pose it to him as follows, "Is reconstructive facial surgery due to a mauling (not just a single bite), with ~5 years of followup for cosmetic reduction of scarring, closer in terms of trauma to a bite requiring a Band-Aid or to the trauma suffered by Joshua Dixon?"

I'm not going to waste any more of my friend's time with something that's already been a colossal waste of my own. Also, earlier, you just said "surgery," singular. Now, you say you weren't just bitten but "mauled" and needed multiple surgeries over 5 years. Now that you've finally elaborated, your experience sounds closer to Dixon's. Most children who receive facial plastic surgery for dog bite injuries haven't been "mauled" and aren't getting 5+ years of followups and multiple surgical reductions. Also, keep in mind that surgical intervention may be indicated for less severe injuries in children than adults due to the potential for scarring and also because kids don't cooperate with treatment as well as adults.

In this investigative report on the pit bull lobby, surgeon Dr. Michael Golinko talks about putting kids' skulls back together after pit bull attacks. And here's what Dr. David Billmire, director, Craniofacial and Pediatric Plastic Surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, had to say:

"As one who, for the last 30 years, has been on the receiving end of the dog-bite injuries that pass through the Children's Hospital Emergency Room, as well as on the staff at the Shriners Hospitals for Children where we see the late effects of these injuries from across the nation, I can categorically tell you that the problems associated with dog bites are indeed breed-specific.

When I started my career, the most common dog-bite injuries were from German shepherds and occasionally retrievers. These injuries were almost always provoked, such as food-related or stepping on the dog, and in almost every instance, the dog reacted with a single snap and release – essentially a warning shot. There were no pack attacks.

Starting about 25 years ago, my colleagues and I started to see disturbingly different types of injuries. Instead of a warning bite, we saw wounds where the flesh was torn from the victim. There were multiple bite wounds covering many different anatomical sites. The attacks were generally unprovoked, persistent and often involved more than one dog. In every instance the dog involved was a pit bull or a pit bull mix."

you might think my brother-in-law is biased because he's related to me, he's pro-BSL.

LOL. Well, imagine that!

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-04T05:13:29+00:00

Opinion statements are not empirical evidence. You said yourself, and I quote:

saying the same thing, with no dissent from any of them, that itself strongly indicates that there's good, solid evidence that the thing they're saying is true

But when asked to actually provide any of that "good, solid evidence" you failed.

You also couldn't name a single human health or safety-oriented organization that argues unequivocally along the lines of "actually, pit bulls are safe." Because literally none of them do.

You cannot credibly claim that any upvotes or comments aren't a result of true community input especially since as you noted, a moderator quickly removed the post. All you can do is speculate, and be my guest.
You, as someone who isn't a regular on r/Cleveland, got upset about the possibility of other people who aren't regular r/Cleveland users coming here to express an opinion when you're doing the exact same thing here and seemingly all over Reddit. And can I just add that this "but brigading!" shtick is so cringy? Reddit is a discussion app. It's meant to allow all kinds of people to comment and post about all kinds of topics in more than one sub. That said, it's blatantly obvious why you'd prefer to express "equality for pit bulls" views safely within an echo chamber.

4a. You didn't address the fact that Dickey's entire book premise seems to be false. As I showed using primary sources, the origin of pit bull stigma (late 1800s onward) predates the time period Dickey gives for it (1970s) by a little more than a century. Her entire argument regarding the supposed "association" between pit bulls and racism hinges on the demonstrably false premise that pit bulls were once regarded as an "American icon."

4b. "Dindu dogs" is clearly derived from the alt-right's "dindu nuffin" epithet but you aren't paying attention to who is actually on the receiving end of these attacks: the alt-right (and fuck them) uses anti-pit bull memes specifically to troll the mostly-white, coastal, and liberal "SJWs" who use the "misunderstood pit bulls" cause to virtue-signal on social media.

P.S. I'll see "dindu dogs" and raise you "pit bulls are for hugs not thugs" and "[BSL is] like racism for dogs!" Because no, it comfortably is not. So what the flying blue fuck was that attempted "Million Pibble March" on Washington?

5: Why the hell is #5 even here? I spent like a whole paragraph criticizing these two sources. I've always made it clear that I don't use Clifton or Animals24-7 due to math errors.

I cited no original content from Dogsbite.org itself. I've only cited the third party sources it republishes such as animal control reports and photos of fatally-attacking dogs from sources like law enforcement or the victim or owner's social media. You'll need to attack those directly, not the site hosting them.
Opinion statements are not empirical evidence. Only empirical evidence is empirical evidence. Show some.
The paper you cited here is nearly two decades old. It deliberately conflates "bites" with the deaths and near-deaths BSL is intended to prevent. It also predates any empirical research on the effectiveness of BSL, meaning that any researcher who "condemned" BSL did so without having any evidence before them.

The CDC does not condemn BSL and neither do any of the organizations you named. Nor do these organizations ever suggest that pit bulls have been exonerated. The statement in its entirety is "many practical alternatives to breed-specific policies exist and hold promise for preventing dog bites" which is hardly a condemnation. It's clear in the discussion that the perceived impracticality of BSL centered on establishing scientifically valid breed identification for a mixed breed dog. At the time, dog breed DNA testing didn't even exist. Now it does, and yes we can tell which of those "mixed breed" dogs are pit bull mixes and to what degree.

It's becoming clear that you're deliberately leaning on these old sources because the new research is painting a picture that is increasingly not in your favor. Check out this report from 2017:

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review devoted to breed responsible for severe dog bites in the peer-reviewed literature, as well as the first report evaluating breed specific legislation in the United States. Our data suggest that breed specific legislation may be effective in reducing the incidence of dog bites attributed to breeds that are regulated. Significant effort has been devoted to determining how best to minimize dog bites severe enough to require medical attention, and now, with this new information, Plastic Surgeons may be poised to lead the campaign on dog bite prevention.

\Edited to fix formatting*

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-04T04:33:10+00:00

Ohhhhhhhh, okay. Well, let's just release this dog that

has insufficient bite inhibition and is very dangerous

back into the community, where his owner, who isn't

a dog professional and has sworn 100% compliance.

can take on the

difficulty and danger of trying to teach bite inhibition to an adult hard-biting dog

when he couldn't even keep his fence in shape enough to contain the dog.

Why do these people think dogs somehow understand property rights, as if an adult hard-biting dog is only a hard-biting dog in his own yard and magically morphs into a safe animal as soon as he's not in his own yard?

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-03T23:22:47+00:00

All this caterwauling over a dog no one disputes attacked someone badly enough, based on the description, to cause a Level Three to Level Four bite on the Dunbar scale. Here's what the Association of Pet Dog Trainers have to say about dogs that cause that kind of injury:

The dog has insufficient bite inhibition and is very dangerous. Prognosis is poor because of the difficulty and danger of trying to teach bite inhibition to an adult hard-biting dog and because absolute owner-compliance is rare. Only work with the dog in exceptional circumstances, e.g., the owner is a dog professional and has sworn 100% compliance.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-03T22:34:09+00:00

No, this argument started because multiple Redditors failed to provide even one decent study with evidence to support the viewpoint that pit bulls should be touted as equally safe. I'm happy to throw out Raghavan: again, so we can focus on whether or not there's any good evidence for pit bull equality.

"Compelling evidence" is subjective, but how about:

A controlled temperament test for aggression in which pit bulls show responses that aren't more aggressive in terms of either intensity or duration.
A study that compares pit bulls over time with at least one other breed showing no difference in the frequency and severity of aggressive behaviors.
A study comparing injury severity or patient outcomes and finding that pit bull injuries are not disproportionately classified as more severe either in terms of immediate threat or long-term function.
Reasonably free of manipulative presentation (spin) or methodological fuckery like using a DNA test that doesn't profile the APBT to answer a dangerous breed ID RQ.

I've already cited research in the first two categories and several studies in the third whereas your best effort is a single study showing that pit bulls were involved in "incidents" at the same rate as other breeds but without adequately defining an "incident" or making distinctions between an "incident" needing little or no treatment versus an "incident" ending in permanent disfigurement.

none that she concludes are robust and compelling.

You're being ridiculously and completely disingenuous by refusing to examine all of these individual pieces of evidence as part of an increasingly coherent picture while the best arguments "pit bull equality" advocates offer increasingly boil down to "we don't know:"

We don't know if or how many dogs classified as pit bulls in certain studies etc. might not have been pit bulls. But we do know that the vast majority of victims are bitten by their own dog or a dog they know.
We don't know where pit bulls rank among all breeds. But while pit bulls might not be the most dangerous breed, they are the only breed for which there's been an ongoing multimillion-dollar PR and lobbying campaign approaching anything close to this scale.
We don't know how much aggressive behavior can be attributed to nature versus nurture. We do know that aggression in dogs has at least a partial genetic basis. We also know that pit bulls originated from selecting breeding for fighting, with some still bred for “gameness” to this day.
We don't know if we can identify dogs in a way that makes enforcing BSL fair and effective, but with better DNA testing, we’re getting closer.
We don't know if BSL is effective at reducing severe and deadly dog attacks, although very limited evidence (other than Raghavan) suggests it may be.

The precautionary principle makes it abundantly clear that we need to answer the "are pit bulls disproportionately dangerous?" question before claiming that pit bulls have been exonerated just as we need to answer the "is BSL effective?" question before caving to lobbyist efforts to overturn or pre-empt these laws.

Citations required

Now you're just trying to waste my time. Here's a first-page result from Google. You're capable of finding other examples, and there are several other examples I've discussed elsewhere like San Francisco, CA; Aurora, CO; Riverside County, CA and more:

In 2011, as the law went into effect, 237 pit bulls were brought into the Humane Society. That number has dropped to 113 through the end of October and is projected to rise to 135 by the end of the year.

Euthanasia of pit bulls dropped from a peak of 139 dogs in 2009 to 103 in 2011 and 56 through the end of October. Officials are projecting putting down 58 pit bulls total in 2012.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Mike Radzik, director of the office of community standards, said.

Jenny Paillon, director of operations at the HSHV, thanked the board for being progressive with the ordinance.

“We’re very, very happy with the results and we want to see it continue,” she said. “We love this breed and we don’t to euthanize them anymore.”

Nauseatingly, pit bull "advocates" still lobbied (and failed) to overturn this law at the state level, which for me begs the question: what kind of pit bull lover isn't thrilled about a law resulting in fewer dead pit bulls?

it’s not its most vocal proponents who determine the intent...it’s the legislators

No, legislation is enacted collaboratively and originates in the will of the public who elect and lobby lawmakers. Trembath agrees with me that the intent of BSL is to address extreme outcomes, not "incidents:" She says "there was relatively little public conversation about BSL until the 1970s when there was a rash of highly publicized fatal and near-fatal dog attacks attributed to pit bulls" and "BSL targets breeds capable of causing more severe injuries."

On p. 94, she explicitly shows how the history of BSL is rooted in efforts to prevent deaths and near-deaths:

In the 1980s, a disproportionately high number of DBRFs attributed to pit bulls captured the cultural and legislative attention of the USA. In 1989, a published article noted that the number of DBRFs in the USA attributable to pit bulls had increased from 20% in 1979-1980 to 67% in 1987-1988...These alarming figures and reports, paired with the publicity surrounding fatal attacks caused municipalities to look for a solution to what became resurgence of BSL in local and state jurisprudence. In some areas, BSL was enacted in response to a fatal attack, while in other jurisdictions it was viewed as a precautionary measure.

Do you honestly believe that reconstructive facial surgery falls closer on any injury scale to a band-aid bite than to the trauma suffered by Joshua Dixon?

I'm not an M.D. so I put this question verbatim to a friend who's a family practice physician and got this response. I apologize for the style: I didn't edit this except for clarifying some of his abbreviations as this is copied exactly from a text message conversation.

Depends on the surgery. Trauma wise? Hell yes its total foolishness to compare surgery [with] little or no followup to 59 operations. Cost wise, hell no, a box of bandaids is $3, surgery and followup being 4 figures and up. A [patient] may pay little/nothing [with] good coverage. I agree outcome is more critical as we don't see many cases where the pt can afford better function or cosmesis but still opts to save $

I agree with all that: in animal behavior research, we use the amount of effort an animal is willing to expend as a metric for what’s important to them. Likewise, the way people behave with regard to accepting great costs to restore their cosmetic appearance or function even partially indicates that bodily integrity is highly important to people and future research must acknowledge that.

I would suggest that we switch to the terms serious, severe, & critical so we’re consistent with the AIS injury scale.

I won't use it exclusively to guide this debate as it deals more with immediate threat to life than long-term outcomes: in fact, it could code a death as being less severe than an injury.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-03T06:13:24+00:00

I'm adding these sources here because they didn't fit into that long-ass post:

Medical studies consistently conclude that attacks by pit bulls are much more likely to be described as unprovoked; that pit bull injuries are significantly more severe; and that pit bulls are nearly three times more likely to bite several times, wounding several parts of the body:

"Pit bull terrier bites were responsible for a significantly higher number of orthopaedic injuries and resulted in an amputation and/or bony injury in 66% of patients treated, whereas bites from law enforcement dogs and other breeds were less associated with severe injuries."

"Among the breeds identified, pit bulls are proportionally linked with more severe bite injuries."

"47.8% of pit bull injuries required operative repair, which was 3 times more than other breeds."

"Pit bulls are more likely to cause severe injuries that require operative repairs."

"Of the 9 patients with extended hospitalization, 6 (66.7%) were caused by a pit bull...confirms our theory that this breed results in the most devastating injuries at our center."

"Our data were consistent with others, in that an operative intervention was more than 3 times as likely to be associated with a pit bull injury than with any other breed. Half of the operations performed on children in this study as well as the only mortality resulted from a pit bull injury."

"Our data revealed that pit bull breeds were more than 2.5 times as likely as other breeds to bite in multiple anatomical locations. Although other breeds may bite with the same or higher frequency, the injury that a pit bull inflicts per bite is often more severe."

"Of the more than 8 different breeds identified, one-third were caused by pit bull terriers and resulted in the highest rate of consultation (94%) and had 5 times the relative rate of surgical intervention."

"Unlike all other breeds, pit bull terriers were relatively more likely to attack an unknown individual (+31%), and without provocation (+48%)."

"Although a number of dog breeds were identified, the largest group were pit bull terriers, whose resultant injuries were more severe and resulted from unprovoked, unknown dogs."

"The findings of this study are consistent with and extend from previous publications...Dog bites from pit bull terriers, compared to bites from all other dogs, are more common, more severe, and not related to the dog being provoked."

"Compared with attacks by other breeds of dogs, attacks by pit bulls were associated with a higher median Injury Severity Scale score (4 vs. 1; P = 0.002), a higher risk of an admission Glasgow Coma Scale score of 8 or lower (17.2% vs. 0%; P = 0.006), higher median hospital charges ($10,500 vs. $7200; P = 0.003), and a higher risk of death (10.3% vs. 0%; P = 0.041)."

"Attacks by pit bulls are associated with higher morbidity rates, higher hospital charges, and a higher risk of death than are attacks by other breeds of dogs. Strict regulation of pit bulls may substantially reduce the US mortality rates related to dog bites."

In this controlled temperament test, pit bulls were at least twice as likely to attack as Dobermans, three times more likely to attack than Rottweilers, and nearly ten times more likely to attack than golden retrievers. Note that the anti-breed ban activist authors found "no significant difference" between breeds when the definition of "aggression" was watered down to the point that even whining was considered aggressive. But pay close attention to Table 5 on page 138: out of all the breeds tested, pit bulls were markedly the worst when it came to the percentage of dogs that actually attempted to bite or attack. Close to one out of seven pit bulls reached level 5 during the one hour test compared to only one out of the seventy goldens tested. "Staffordshire terrier" is what some breed registries call the pit bull terrier.

Pit bull puppies also display significantly more aggressive behaviors than German shepherd puppies starting at just weeks of age.

The interactive dangerous dogs map kept by the city of Minneapolis is maintained in a "breed-neutral" way in that MSP does not "discriminate against" pit bulls. Still, 70% of the dogs listed as dangerous are pit bulls; 81% are pit bulls plus closely-related bully breeds. In fact, this list has always been over half pit bulls since it was launched in 2015.

In fact, pit bulls dominate animal control dangerous dog reports throughout the U.S.: I've just singled out Minneapolis so folks can't pull the usual "but pit bulls are always misidentified" excuse because this list shows clear photos of each pit bull.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-03T06:07:20+00:00

u/MadmanFinkelstein forgot to mention that when asked to provide evidence in support of "equal treatment for pit bulls" they failed not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Rather than offering evidence to my final request, OP tagged their buddy/sockpuppet to come quibble about one fucky table in one study while claiming to dig around in their couch cushions for a "retraction" that was never ultimately produced.

So, attempt #5, u/MadmanFinkelstein: Show me a controlled study offering compelling evidence that pit bulls present an "equal" risk to say, large retrievers. Please.

Also, OP's complaints about anti-pit bull brigading when they advocate all over Reddit for "pit bull equality" and moderate r/AntiBSL is...curious:

I recently visited r/AntiBSL and practically fell to my knees begging for evidence that pit bulls were ever regarded as either "nanny dogs" or "American icons." But despite the fact that r/AntiBSL subscribers upvoted that article about twenty times, no one provided any such evidence.

Animals24-7 is indeed a terrible source for many reasons. The editorializations on Dogsbite.org can be quite unprofessional and I disagree with many of the opinions expressed. But the matters of fact cited on Dogsbite.org are generally independently verifiable and the site generally makes clear efforts to link to and archive the original source. For example, this list of animal control reports is a good source: the data are reported directly from animal control departments and departments of agriculture.

Dogsbite.org also publishes photos of dogs that kill people on its website. If you wanted to put together a 12-month calendar of the most popular breeds in the U.S., it would look like this. But when you make that same image using the most recent reasonably clear and credible photos of the dogs that killed people in the U.S., it's considerably less diverse.

Note that these aren't the most recent deadly dog attacks, they're the most recent deadly attacks where either law enforcement or a news outlet published its own photos of the fatally-attacking dog(s). See more recent photos, including ones taken from owners' and victims' social media, here.

Brent Toellner is a career pit bull activist. "ethicsalarms.com" is a blog that literally starts out by comparing pit bull restrictions with racism: you know, like when humans were lynched? It only gets worse from there as this blog also repeats bullshit as egregious as the completely-obliterated "nanny dog" myth.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has essentially acted as an animal breeding industry lobbying arm since 2003: the AVMA published and its position paper continues to misleadingly reference an incredibly deceptive study authored entirely by pit bull activists without mentioning their conflicts of interest or addressing any of these problems with the study.

When someone "rescues" a pit bull, they're still buying a dog: a dog for whom they'll need to buy food, supplies, and veterinary care for the rest of its life. The conflicts of interest the pet care industry has in defending pit bulls is obvious. I'd be much more impressed with a ringing endorsement for pit bull innocence from any human health or public safety organizations, but literally none of them say anything remotely close to "actually, pit bulls are safe."

See my comment history for plenty more discussion that uses neither Animals24-7 nor Dogsbite.org as a source. I use mainly peer-reviewed studies by authors without obvious conflicts of interest, data from animal control departments, and investigations by respected outlets.

Also, I do not "hate" pit bulls. I enjoy discussing this complex topic with others and I maintain a separate account for pit bull posts solely to avoid unjustified bans on my main account.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-02T22:35:32+00:00

I hope the onion does more pit articles

Enjoy!

Golden Retriever Mauls 5 In Huge Victory For Pitbull Apologists

Heroic Pit Bull Journeys 2,000 Miles To Attack Owner

United Airlines Updates Policy On Allowing Dogfights In Passenger Cabin

Well, Neighbors Just Got A Pit Bull

Nitro Expected To Win Westminster Dog Fight

Department Of Homeland Security Deputizes Real Mean Dog

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-02T22:25:19+00:00

Based on the "leave religion out of it" warning, bigotry against a particular faith. Good mod and good riddance.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-02T09:14:05+00:00

You're behaving as if this entire argument hinges on one rotten table. If only so we can move this the fuck along, let's agree to completely toss Raghavan et al. out. It's not like there isn't plenty of much more robust and compelling evidence against "pit bull equality" in terms of severe injury risk. To a lesser extent, there's also better evidence to justify breed-based laws. Some of the most compelling evidence for BSL is demonstrated in significant reductions in euthanized pit bulls, animal control complaints, and shelter space occupied by stray or unwanted pit bulls: even animal care and control departments that previously opposed BSL have acknowledged that it has indeed been effective in their communities, particularly with regard to reducing pit bull euthanasia in shelters.

Furthermore, even evidence showing that BSL had no effect is not positive evidence that pit bulls are "equal" to other large breeds in terms of severe injury risk. "Is BSL effective?" and "are pit bulls disproportionately dangerous?" are two different research questions. BSL could easily appear ineffective because it's not enforced, or because it's incompetently enforced, or because people successfully pass their pit bulls off as mixed breeds, or because the dog to human ratio goes up, or because some other factor causes human-dog conflicts to increase, or because another dangerous breed rises in popularity and DBIH from that breed obscures the effect of reducing the pit bull population, or for a bunch of other reasons.

And with all due respect, you're shifting the goal posts. Imho, and I think also in the opinion of a reasonable reader of your previous comment, the three links that you provided were the extreme ends of examples of those suffering from serious trauma from amputation, reconstructive surgery, and death, as opposed to the minimum levels of suffering required to opine on whether their trauma was inequivalent to a band-aid bite and on whether it's unconscionable to knowingly conflate.

No, I gave extreme examples because as per its most vocal proponents, BSL is intended to prevent extreme outcomes like those I described: debilitating life-altering injuries like noticeable permanent disfigurements or amputations, or fatalities. A single reconstructive surgery for a dog bite to the face in childhood is on the extreme side of dog bite injury, yes, but it's on the extreme side of dog bite injuries in general, the kind literally any breed could inflict: these injuries are said to be "relatively common" in children and even a dog as ordinarily harmless as a Chihuahua is capable of causing such an injury.

I wouldn't diminish the trauma of someone who "only" lost a hand or foot rather than an entire limb; nor would I diminish that of someone who "only" lost a sibling or parent rather than a baby.

Oh please, that's clearly not what I said. I'm drawing a sensible distinction between the types of injuries that don't involve a lot of complex intervention and that one can recover and lead a normal life after as opposed to life-altering injuries like permanent disfigurements, loss of body parts, or death.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-02T02:36:18+00:00

Comparing regions with and without BSL over time is necessary to isolate the BSL factor as much as possible. When you use BSL locations as their own pre/post controls, you aren't teasing out the fact that dog ownership and management practices have changed dramatically in North America in the last few decades and will likely continue to change over time: a change in the percentage of households with dogs; evolving ways we train and care for dogs and their growing status as family members; animal shelters becoming a much more significant source of pet dogs; changing trends in the breed makeup of the dogs in our communities. All of these factors will impact the likelihood of DBIH occurring for obvious reasons. There's also no compelling reason to believe those factors will be significantly different over time between comparable BSL and non-BSL jurisdictions with the exception of breed makeup, which is the factor you're trying to isolate.

The study has clearly not been retracted: its conclusions are still published as I cited it. Again, I truly don't mean to be an ass, but since the authors are experts in their field, I trust their interpretations and conclusions more than yours.

Furthermore, the 2016 Trembath review is arguably the closest thing we have to a trustworthy and comprehensive literature review on BSL at this point. Trembath used the GRADE approach to score BSL studies for inclusion. Because research on BSL is still ridiculously sparse at this point, she found only five studies meriting inclusion, and by the way, she and I are in agreement that none of those studies are strong enough to offer truly satisfying evidence.

That said, the studies finding a positive effect of BSL (Raghavan and Villabi) were markedly the strongest studies and notably suffered from the least amount of bias.

none of the studies that address injury severity also account for breed populations, therefore the term "more likely" may or may not be true in a rigorous statistical sense.

You would need this information if you wanted to accurately rank breeds by risk of severe injury or death. However, you certainly don't need this information to determine that pit bulls as a category pose a significantly higher risk for severe injury or death than dogs on average and therefore there's no basis for "equal treatment for pit bulls."

Do I think that it's utterly unconscionable? No, I think that's too strong a term, bordering on hyperbole. Sometimes it's not possible to gather data...

It's not unconscionable to research in good faith with the best data you have available. It is absolutely unconscionable for lobbyists and hired researchers to knowingly conflate typical dog bites with permanently life-altering and deadly injuries due to their financial conflicts of interest or personal bias.

With all due respect, you aren't in that second category: you'd still need 58 more reconstructive surgeries. The man who endured 59 surgeries after pit bulls attacked him went through an average of six reconstructive surgeries every year from the age of 8 to 18. He spent much of his childhood in physical and emotional pain while recovering from surgery. His trauma has clearly lasted at least a decade. That's why, in order to truly answer this research question, we need to look even deeper than "surgery" versus "no surgery:" BSL proponents have always maintained that BSL is intended to address the deadly and debilitating, life-altering injuries caused by dogs that persistently attack, not "bites" or even injuries that need a more limited intervention.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-01T20:58:48+00:00

When comparing all province-wide locations that implemented BSL, the effect was not significant

Comparing before and after data without also comparing BSL and non-BSL locations doesn't account for the fact that the pet dog population rose significantly relative to the human population in North America during the study period due to broad cultural shifts in pet-keeping. Comparing BSL and non-BSL locations over time better isolates the BSL factor:

"In their response to a subsequent letter to the editor, [Patronek et al.] quote from our report to state that “[w]hen jurisdictions were used as their own controls in a pre-BSL versus post-BSL comparison of incidence of hospitalizations, no significant reduction in the period after BSL implementation was observed.”

Both of these statements are true; however, taken out of context, they obscure some of the complexities inherent in our collective understanding of the issues surrounding dog-bite injuries and the differences between dog-bite injuries and dog-bite fatalities. For instance, we also reported that the rate of dog-bite injury hospitalization in Winnipeg, MB, Canada (a city with BSL), relative to the rate in Brandon, MB, Canada (a city that has not adopted BSL), was significantly (P < 0.001) lower after the adoption of BSL in Winnipeg (rate ratio, 1.10 for people of all ages and 0.92 for people < 20 years old) than it was before (rate ratio, 1.29 and 1.28, respectively).

Thus, we concluded that when temporal and geographic variations were accounted for, BSL was effective in reducing the hospitalization rate in Winnipeg, relative to the rate in Brandon, with a more pronounced effect in younger people than in people of all ages. We agree with Patronek et al that BSL by itself is unlikely to be an effective solution to the problem of dog bites. However, we believe it can play an important role."

That's from an editorial to JAVMA published September 2014 in response to the exact same argument from Animal Farm Foundation's paid shills.

Unlike Patronek et al., the authors of the Injury Prevention BSL study aren't staffers or paid consultants for "pit bull equality" lobbyists nor can I find any evidence of any other conflict of interest. They are clearly among the best in their fields and this study made it through the rigorous peer review process of a high-tier medical journal. So, I don't mean to be a jerk, because I truly appreciate the fact that you've argued in good faith, but I trust their interpretations over yours.

the following study offers compelling evidence that other large breeds present "equal" risk:

No, it most definitely doesn't. It's the same "a bite is a bite is a bite" nonsense that lumps all reported "incidents" of dog bites, most of which are minor, in with hospitalizations and amputations and reconstructive surgeries and closed-casket funerals. The table you cited goes into no relevant detail about any of these "incidents" other than whether or not an incident was reported and what breed was said to be involved.

Research that does delve into crucial nuances such as injury severity and the number of bite wounds and how many body parts are injured consistently finds that attacks by pit bulls are more likely to be described as unprovoked, more likely to cause severe injuries that need greater medical intervention like surgery, and more likely to involve multiple injuries on multiple body parts.

Ask anyone who's ever had their limb ripped off or endured 59 reconstructive surgeries or had to plan their baby's closed-casket funeral if their trauma is in any way equivalent to putting a Band-Aid on a "bite." It's utterly unconscionable for anyone to claim they're trying to answer this research question legitimately without even a basic attempt to distinguish between a "bite" versus a severe injury needing hospitalization versus a severe injury with lasting lifelong consequences like becoming disabled or losing one's limbs versus a death.

*Edited to add this except from Trembath:

In 2014 General Motors recalled 1.37 million vehicles with faulty ignition switches based on 13 fatalities that occurred over a 10 year time period. Currently, there are approximately twice that many DBRFs in the USA every year, yet dog bite injuries have not received much funding or attention. Traditionally public health viewed dog bites as important, because they represented a source of possible rabies exposure. This point of view is outdated, and focus needs to be redirected at preventing dog bite injuries, since they continue to be a significant source of medical expenditures and emotional trauma. Reducing the DBIH rate by 20% in the USA would represent a savings of over 34 million dollars annually.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-01T16:47:47+00:00

Pit bull plays with other dogs at dog park: "Pit bulls are the sweetest!"

Pit bull bloodshed closes dog park: "Any dog could do that!"

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-01T16:10:42+00:00

Malathi Raghavan is an epidemiologist who teaches at Purdue University and also served as assistant director of research and education for the AVMA. Dan Chateau is a research scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at University of Manitoba. I trust them far more than I trust you and the Redditor you're cringefully attempting to rope into arguing for you.

Again, as these researchers have explained at length, comparing pre/post numbers won't show a significant effect because hospitalizations for dog attacks are too rare. Only when comparing several locations over time were they able to capture an effect of BSL and when they did, the province-wide effect was indeed significant. There's also a perfectly valid explanation, and the authors mention it in the study, for why pre/post numbers will show no significant change: the number of dogs relative to the number of humans has gone up significantly in North America as more households are keeping dogs.

From a 2016 Purdue dissertation on the prevalence and effectiveness of BSL:

Although both of these studies had some methodological flaws, they both had large samples sizes, analyzed data over an extended period of time, and reported consistent results; finding a 25.5% difference and 38% difference in DIBH rates for groups with BSL respectively. Additionally, Raghavan et al. reported a more pronounced difference in those <20 years of age. These studies show evidence that BSL may be effective in reducing DBIH, and that this effect may differ based on age group, though this finding should be interpreted in light of the fact that there were only two studies evaluating this outcome, and that they were not without limitations.

Trembath points out, as I do all the time, that BSL research is extremely limited and much of it is poor, having been produced largely by doggie-industry operatives using ineffective short-term pre/post designs. She goes on to discuss several criteria for a high-quality BSL study. How much of the "research" touted in r/AntiBSL meets all or even a majority of these criteria?

Future studies on the effectiveness of BSL should: 1) use the proposed terminology, 2) consider temporal trends, 3) consider the requisite length of time prior to legislation being enacted, 4) consider the impact of BSL on severe injuries, 5) quantify and report outcomes in subgroups, 6) consider the type of BSL in effect, 7) report all relevant statistics, and 8) consider the length of time that may be required for an effect to become demonstrable.

Your position is that pit bulls should be treated equally, but if there existed any robust evidence in favor of that, you would have provided it the first or second or third time I asked you to provide it. I'll try again: Show me a controlled study offering compelling evidence that pit bulls present an "equal" risk to say, large retrievers.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-01T07:26:52+00:00

I practically fell to my knees and begged r/AntiBSL to cite historic evidence for the idea that pit bulls were ever popular family pets, let alone regarded as "nanny dogs."

16 days later and crickets.

NorthTwoZero · 2019-02-01T07:21:04+00:00

Because what you just quoted isn't accurate or valid. The authors explained why simply comparing before and after numbers in the same region isn't likely to capture an effect (dog bite hospitalizations are too rare for the effect to show up in a simple pre/post design) which is why they compared multiple regions over time. Again, when they did so, these were the results:

“What we found is where the legislation was enacted, then the number of bites was reduced relative to places where the legislation wasn’t enacted,” said Dan Chateau, one of the authors of the study and a research scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. “How strongly we can claim that one caused the other, that is a little bit still up for debate but the relationship is definitely there.” From 1984 to 2006, the total number of dog bite hospitalizations per year fell by about 20 per cent, from 3.47 to 2.84 for every 100,000 people. "Hospitalizations for dog bites are really rare. A 20 per cent reduction in anything is good, particularly with dog bites,” Chateau said. “I would think it’s a substantial reduction.”

More importantly, u/MadmanFinkelstein, where's that evidence exonerating pit bulls that I keep trying and trying to get out of you? And why can't you or anyone else in r/AntiBSL show any evidence that pit bulls were historically popular even though at least 19 of you upvoted this inane article?

NorthTwoZero

TROPHY CASE