This is only said by people who’ve never actually taken a class about statistics.
Numbers may not lie, but they also don’t make assertions. People suck at interpreting data and that fact is constantly utilized to mislead people.
I’m not saying this to defend pitbulls, just that bite statistics don’t really tell us anything about innate aggression in dog breeds. Just like FBI statistics don’t tell us about innate criminality in ethnicity.
Those bite statistics don’t make any attempt to rule out misleading variables. It could be that pitt bull bites are reported more often because of the extent of harm they cause. It could be that people who gravitate towards breeds who are thought to be more aggressive are wanting and are training for aggression.
Statistics is hard, and can generally be used to shape opinions on just about anything.
We also don’t really have bite statistics. Almost every citation I see for the data that gets posted over and over again traces back to one of two sources. One was a paper done in the 90s which both asserts that its methodology is inadequate to infer breed related risk and inexplicably combines rottweilers and pitbulls into a single category, a point which never gets carried through into other discussions. The other is that dogsbite site which openly states it is an advocacy site seeking the elimination of pit bulls and frequently gets its “data” from facebook stalking victims of dog bites for pictures of dogs they spent time around recently and then attempting to guess the breed involved from said picture. This is some real clown level shit, especially if you’ve ever read reports about even veterinarians trying to guess the breeds of mixed dogs that are their patients.
This is only said by people who’ve never actually taken a class about statistics.
Numbers may not lie, but they also don’t make assertions. People suck at interpreting data and that fact is constantly utilized to mislead people.
I’m not saying this to defend pitbulls, just that bite statistics don’t really tell us anything about innate aggression in dog breeds. Just like FBI statistics don’t tell us about innate criminality in ethnicity.
Those bite statistics don’t make any attempt to rule out misleading variables. It could be that pitt bull bites are reported more often because of the extent of harm they cause. It could be that people who gravitate towards breeds who are thought to be more aggressive are wanting and are training for aggression.
Statistics is hard, and can generally be used to shape opinions on just about anything.
We also don’t really have bite statistics. Almost every citation I see for the data that gets posted over and over again traces back to one of two sources. One was a paper done in the 90s which both asserts that its methodology is inadequate to infer breed related risk and inexplicably combines rottweilers and pitbulls into a single category, a point which never gets carried through into other discussions. The other is that dogsbite site which openly states it is an advocacy site seeking the elimination of pit bulls and frequently gets its “data” from facebook stalking victims of dog bites for pictures of dogs they spent time around recently and then attempting to guess the breed involved from said picture. This is some real clown level shit, especially if you’ve ever read reports about even veterinarians trying to guess the breeds of mixed dogs that are their patients.
This. It’s not neccessarily the breed itself. Look at who is likely to own the breed and what they are likely to do with it.
Yeah that’s the point, chihuahuas are assholes too with wrong owners but due its size its not gonna maul children.
I rather give an dumb toddler a spoon than a tec9
Lies, damn lies, and statistics