In addition to the small number of dogs studied, there is an even more glaring example of bias. For example, they looked at 153 ‘pit bull’ owners versus, for example, one Labrador retriever and no German Shepherd Dogs, the two most popular dogs according to county licensing stats.

It’s unacceptable that the MSM rushes to parrot so-called ‘findings’ but resists the actual facts around the whole issue.

The fail to realize that a war is being waged, and that the dogs are just a red herring, no more important than the game pieces are in Monopoly with respect to the game being played or its outcome.

Hang tough, dog owners, we are in to win this. A small donation to your local group of BSL fighters would not be out of order either

As for the story, it’s slanted. Thing is, nearly everyone has had a “brush with the law” when you count traffic citations! Traffic Citations? SInce when does getting a speeding ticket make you a “vicious” criminal. I’d like to see an actual breakdown of those numbers and see just how many of their “criminals” had nothing more than a speeding ticket on their record. Another problem is the size of the control group. You can’t get an accurate national or even state average from only 355 subjects. I’d also like to see what criteria was used in selecting those 355 subjects. How did they find dog owners that had not registered their dogs. I would not be supprised if they selected some of them through some kind of criminal search, at which point, of course a large selection will have criminal records. It all depends on the demographics.

Thanks very much for barking in! I agree with both of you that this study has some serious problems. Perhaps the worst problem is the way it is being reported in the “regular” media.

This reminds me very much of one of my economics classes in graduate school where the professor made a point of showing us how research can be designed to find what one wants. He quoted research that showed a correlation between weather and the stock market. That’s similar to how this research shows a correlation between dog breeds and criminal records. As the old law of research says — “correlation is NOT causation.”

For those who ARE fighting BSL, I encourage you to check out the links listed by both Dianne and Richard. Richard’s in particular makes some points that I think will be very useful whenever this research gets hauled out in the press or court cases! Thanks Richard for your well thought through dissection of the research in question.

So thank you again for barking in and pointing out more of these flaws. We as dog lovers have to know what is being said if we are to combat it. And in this case for our fellow dog lovers who are fighting BSL around the world and who will probably be facing this research in the press and court, forewarned is forearmed!

http://caveat.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/11/17/2507251.html

They say: “The most frequent low-risk breeds seen in the study included terriers, beagles, collies and poodles.”

Um, terriers. My ‘pit bulls’ are true 100% American Pit Bull Terriers. UKC, county and insurance registered American Pit Bull Terriers. Real pit bulls. It seems someone forgot to familiarize themselves with the APBT. So what they are saying is that only some terriers, some beagles, some collies and some poodles were low risk.

Furthermore, any study that quotes the law’s definition of a vicious dog is invalid. The study doesn’t study anything. They are targeting pit bulls only, much like the law does…in fact, JUST like the law does.

I only hope that this gets somewhere: http://vote4tom.blogspot.com/2006/10/ohio-court-rules-bsl-unconstitutional.html