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(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Ironically, your bias against pitbuls has seemingly driven you to dismiss reputable studies from the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Irish Veterinary Journal, The Veterinary Journal, the Journal of Anatomy, and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.
The opinion you hold regarding the methods of the first article may have weight to you, but it emphatically does not hold more authority or validity than an in-depth study from the American Veterinary Association.
As for the second study, it was only asserting that breed does not determine a difference in bite severity (size taken into account, of course.) Are you refuting this assertion? If so, please provide reputable studies that back your position.
You ask if you must go on... Yes, I think you must. The burden of evidence is on you, not any of us. I've provided resources from leading veterinary institutions all over the world, and so far you've done nothing but link me to a Wikipedia article listing fatal dog attacks one after another.
I'm tying this to human-derived racism because the logic being used is nearly exactly the same as your supposition... The fact the only "evidence" you've linked here is based on correlation, rather than causation, proves my point. You propose here that pit bulls are inherently dangerous - I'm pulling this from your insistence that they be banned (rather than the owners of violent individual dogs) - all because you've looked at a list, and you've noticed one breed is more common than the rest.
Has it ever occurred to you that if you were a violent and/or insecure person wanting to evoke fear in others, you might go get yourself the breed so many (like yourself) see as the most violent and dangerous breed? Imagine if I wasn't the first one to suppose this, and if it became a bit of a trend. Now imagine that trend spiraling for decades.
When a study fails to identify the breed for the vast majority of attacks, then states breed has nothing to do with the attacks, it is an absolute failure of peer review. Also do you not realize journal editors barely read the papers, they get peer reviewers to do it, and shit does get through (source: I've edited journals and published and reviewed dozens of papers).
But let's dive into the other actual sources.
Source 1, no breed identification = not applicable.
Source 2, once again does not include any pitbulls, so does not apply at all. The website is absolutely idiotic to include it. As for pitbull bites being worse, for all bites that required hospital intervention, 50% were by pitbulls, so yeah worse than other breeds:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5682160/
here's another paper showing pitbulls cause more damage with their bites than most breeds, only matched by German Shepherds in severity:
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/prs/2020/00000146/00000005/art00076
Source 3, data only goes up to 1998, and the vast majority of fatalities from a known breed are still caused by pitbulls.
Source 4, breed identification, not applicable given pits are mixes.
Source 5, same as source 4.
Source 6, abstract claims they saw similar aggression between breeds, but the data suggests otherwise. Where 59% of golden retrievers showed no aggression, only 35% of pitbulls showed no aggression. And where only 1.4 percent of retrievers showed significant aggression, 14 percent of pitbulls showed it. So pitbulls are actually more aggressive than golden retrievers. The authors bend over backwards to claim it's because the owners are more stressed, so the animals get stressed, instead of acknowledging the data shows pits are actually more aggressive. Seems it was written by pit apologists, and not by unbiased observers.
Source 7, is a study from the UK, where pitbulls are banned, and does not include any data on pitbulls. So as with source 2, it should not be on the site.
Source 8, includes zero data on pitbulls, but does show bigger dogs have stronger bites. So not exactly in pitbulls favour there.
Source 9, just a summary of how bites are measured, no mention of pitbulls.
Source 10, makes no mention of breeds. Breed specific legislation does not mean that breed can't be found in a region, just that it doesn't reduce bites. Also ticketing works to reduce dog bites.
Source 11, dog population and ownership rate was not in any way mentioned. Bites may have gone up simply because there are more dogs being owned during that period. Without that data this paper is useless (and this data was likely intentionally left out to sell a specific narrative).
Source 12, doesn't include pitbulls, so again fails to act in their defense in any way.
So nope, your, and this websites bias, are causing you to massively misread papers and misinterpret their results.