• redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    Ignoring the previous discussion and talking about those new screenshots, the third looks very untrustworthy at first glance.
    Emotional images, pitbulls named by name in the header navigation, sounds like a single-purpose activist page. It’s like going to peta expecting honest information about changing to a vegan diet or smthn.

    The second image (srsly you could have put links below ffs) I dug up and it’s some kind of property developer, could well be they profit off of fear of dogs or smthn, and going to the actual page they just quote other articles incorrectly anyway. They also misleadingly throw rottweilers into it for some reason, while in the linked article it’s 60% with at least partial pitbull bloodline (note this being incorrectly simplified to “pitbulls”, which is at best sloppy), and 7% rottweiler bloodline, which is just misleading throwing those together without further comment. That also ofc fits the idea that the page just wants to stir up fear for whatever reason.

    Both of these pages are, frankly, trash. Do yourself a favor and remove them as arguments. If your point is correct, those would still make you look so dishonest in arguing it, it makes it look wrong; they are worse than not citing anything.

    Now painfully scraping out the wiki article (Fatal dog attacks in the United States) -fucking link your shit man-, that article seems unproblematic at first glance.

    Going into the actual sources now, the 60% thing linked earlier refers to “fuicelle & lee” which is not a paper to the best of my search ability, and is only ever mentioned on other pages copying the exact same paragraph around, … so yeah that’s sketchy.
    The wikipedia thing I just hope is accurate (I’ll take lt as accurate without checking here), but you gotta note it is a low sample size, half the percentage your other stuff claims (28%), and from seemingly only 2 specific locations.

    I’d sure be interested if you can find any other statistics that don’t just evaporate when you look for a source tho.


    Starting another topic, what if you had clear statistics that a lot of dog damage is done by pitbulls? That doesn’t instantly get you to proving the issue is with pitbulls. It’s ye olde correlation isn’t causation problem.
    One example: Imagine insecure people compensating with pitbulls due to their brand image. Then those people tend to suck as dog owners so you get cases of horrible mistraining. Now if you were to ban pitbulls, or make their ownership “non-badass” via say cage or muzzle requirements, the badass dog brand would shift and those people would mistrain other dogs, the statistics would change to a new breed and the deaths would not decrease. Because in that chain of causation the core issue is the group of owners, and you merely measure the average type of dog those problematic owners get.

    This is a hypothetical naturally, but that’s why a simple “x % of deaths are caused by y dogs” isn’t enough.


    Before you argue allegiances, I don’t like dogs, especially not ones with jumpy or agressive character. I also don’t have experience with dogs.
    Your arguments and my checking of them was the first actual argument on favor of pitbulls I have seen in a long time, I could still be convinced pretty easily that there is some issue with the breed.

    I should be the prime target audience for you to convince. Uninformed, heard anecdotes about pitbulls bad, absolutely no inherent favor or attachment to the breed (they just don’t look good sorry dog people). I should be trivially easy to convince, so please work on your argument.

    • gaybriel_fr_br@jlai.lu
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      2 hours ago

      Alright.

      This is from the NHS:

      Abstract: A Review of Dog Bites in the United States from 1958 to 2016: Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature

      “Since 2001, Pit Bull type breeds have accounted for the largest subset of dog bites reported in the medical literature (37.5%), with mixed breeds (13.3%) and German Shepherds (7.1%) accounting for the 2nd and 3rd largest minority groups during this same time period. In addition to these findings, we evaluated the effectiveness of breed specific legislation in Denver, CO, the largest jurisdiction in the United States with a pit bull ban in place. Since 2001, 5.7% of bites in Denver, CO were attributed to Pit Bull type breeds compared to 54.4% in the remainder of the United States.”

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5636534/

      Notably you’ll notice that a ban, not even just proper cage and muzzle regulation, was the result of an ~89.5% reduction in pitbull attacks (1-(5.7/54.4)).


      This is from a paper on the effectiveness of Pit Bull bans and the human factors involved in the breed’s behaviour:

      Pit Bull Bans and the Human Factors Affecting Canine Behavior

      It says, among other things: “Health professionals and animal behaviorists point out that breed is only one of “[s]everal interacting factors” that determine a dog’s likelihood to attack. 21”

      Meaning this paper acknowledges the role of breed as a confounding genetic factor affecting dog aggression.

      https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1336&context=law-review


      Digging into that link they provide for this claim, we find,

      Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998

      “As in recent years, Rottweilers were the most commonly reported breed involved in fatal attacks, followed by pit bull-type dogs”

      https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/resources/javma_000915_fatalattacks.pdf?mf_ct_campaign=msn-feed


      You can doubt the authenticity of the studies I’ve listed all the way down, bringing up allegiances and ulterior motives, as well as statistical inconsistencies due to missing data about the exact number of Pit Bulls in the US.


      Here’s one final nail in the coffin, look at the following article:

      Breed differences in canine aggression

      This shows clear as day differences in aggressive response by dog breeds.

      https://topdogtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Breed-Differences-in-Canine-Aggression.pdf