More misinformation, deceit and attempts to mislead from Merritt Clifton

It almost seems that if I were looking I could make this a weekly column, but this one is too bizarre to pass up, and given that I've seen the latest piece from Merritt quoted in a couple of places already, I suppose I might as well nip this in the bud.

In the latest issue of Merritt's self published "newspaper" Animal People, Clifton takes aim at the state of Rhode Island with an article "Laws pre-empting breed-specific ordinances pass - but polls tilt the other way".

In the article, Clifton calls out Rhode Island (which has since passed it's law prohibiting laws targeting specific breeds, which is what he refers to as "pre-emption") and why he thinks the law is a bad idea. While most of the article is filled with mistakes, and attempts to mislead (much of it relying on Ed Boks' foolish blog post), there is a paragraph that I've now seen quoted a couple of times that is so full of errors and mis-information that it needs to be addressed in full.

Here's the snippet:

The Nevada, Connecticut and Rhode Island bills, like the similar bill passed in Massachusetts in 2012 were rushed into passage in the last days of their respective legislative sessions, with minimal publicity and debate. Fifteen states now ban breed-specific ordinances, including California, Illinois, Texas and Ohio.

State Farm Insurance, on May 17 2013 disclosed that California, Illinois, Texas and Ohio rated first through fourth in Insurance claims paid for dog attacks in 2011. State Farm paid $20.3 million to 527 victims in California, $10 million to 309 victims in Illinoi, $5.1 million to 219 victims in Texas and $5.4 million to 215 victims in Ohio."

Not only is Clifton's information largely erronious, is is purposefully so in an attempt to mislead people into fearing prohibition of breed-specific laws. It's a desperate grasp for something, anything, that would lend support.

State Legal Process

For all four states that have passed prohibitions on breed-specific laws in the past 12 months (yes, that's FOUR in 12 months, and very noticably trend), all went through the usual process for state laws. The laws were introduced at the beginning of the legislative session. They were sent to committees and discussed, and then, once passed out of committee they went to the House floor, were voted on, then went through the same process in the Senate, and eventually signed into law. Because of the lengthy process of the committee structure, most bills are passed very late in the session.

In Nevada, the bill passed both houses of the legislature with only one dissenting vote. 

In Connecticut, the Senate only had 4 dissenting votes. 

In Massachusetts, the bill spent 5 full months in the democratic process before being signed, so it was hardly a rush job. 

But really, the reason that the bills had less debate than others was because NO ONE OPPOSED THEM. Really, in a world where absolutely no professional support for breed-specifc laws, state legislators were met by knowledgable advocates and organizations in those states that helped pass the laws. This wasn't some rush job. I was a no-brainer based on the fact that there is almost no support outside of Clifton for breed-specific laws.

Ohio

First of all, let's set the record straight. Ohio does NOT pre-empt breed-specific legislation. Ohio law is a breed-neutral, dangerous dog law, that targets dogs based on behavior, not breed. However, the state law does allow local juristictions to pass breed-specific laws. 

So this information from Clifton is just flat wrong. But wait, it gets worse.

Up until February, 2012, Ohio was actually the only state in the US that targeted specific breeds. This law was overturned in February, 2012. 

Now, keep in mind, that Clifton was using Ohio's high bite numbers (and payouts) as a reason why pre-emtion was a bad idea. However, Clifton was basing  this on 2011 data -- a time when Ohio actually TARGETED specific breeds of dogs. So not only is Clifton wrong in trying to use the data to prove his point, in doing so, he actually makes a case against himself. 

Oh, but it gets worse for Merritt.

Keep in mind that Clifton is using only one insurance company for his data -- State Farm. State Farm has a policy that doesn't allow them to insure "Vicious" dogs. Because of the way the Ohio law was written (pre 2012), State Farm WOULD NOT insure pit bulls because state law declared them "vicious" because of breed. So based on this policy, it is unlikely that ANY of the 215 victims and $5.4 million in payouts Clifton attributes to Ohio victims was due to a pit bull bite. None. Further demonstrating how his falsifying of information here is actuall working against his point, not in favor of.

California, Illinois and Texas

So what about these other states?  In their case, it is true that they prohibit breed-specific laws (although California allows for breed-specific mandatory spay/neuter laws).  Why did they have so many bites? 

It's a simple answer:  Math

If you look at the total number of people in each state in the United States, the following are the 7 largest states based on total population:

1) California -- 38 million people

2) Texas - 26 million

3) New York - 19.6 million

4) Florida - 19.3 million

5) Illinois - 12.9 million

6) Pennsylvania - 12.8 million

7) Ohio - 11.5 million

Two things jump out at me on this list:

#1) All 6 of the 6 most populous states in the US have laws prohibiting laws targeting specific breeds.

#2) The best correlation among states with a lot of people bitten by dogs is that these states have a lot of people, and dogs. (New York would appear to be the exception here, but New York actually way under-indexes on dog ownership because such a large percentage of the population lives in New York City where high-rise living is less conducive to dog ownership than in most other parts of the country). So where you have a lot of people, and a lot of dogs, the likelihood of someone getting bitten increases. There's a reason why Maine, which also prohibits breed-specific laws, is not on the list.

This is rocket science.

So it appears that the number of people, and dogs, is the likely cause here, not the laws in place. Except Ohio maybe, which actually TARGETED breeds of dogs, and jumped several states with much higher population than them. Hmmm.

Inadvertently, Clifton then destroys his own data

Over the years, a lot of space has been dedicated here, and elsewhere, to breaking down Merritt Clifton's dog bite data.

Essentially, Clifton has a report of dog bites, as reported by the media, that he has tracked for 30 years now of severe dog attacks in the US.

The errors of the report are plentiful, from thetotal reliance on media reports, to increasing the number of pit bull attacks during a three year window by more than the total number of attacks, to his not understanding that his discovery of Google caused 20% of all of the bite cases in a 29 year report to have appeared within a 19 month window.

Now, I periodically get Clifton's reports just to keep tabs on things, so I don't have an exact window for 2011, but on Dec 22, 2009, Clifton had 2,694 "attacks causing bodily harm" in his report. 

On December 26, 2011, the number was 3,498 -- an increase of 804 (this was during his period of mysterious increase in bites).

So if you consider this 2 years worth of data (which it essentially is), then we can divide by 2 and say that average number of dog bites "causing bodily harm" for the two years is 402. So it appears that Clifton recorded 402 dog attacks in 2011. 

However, based on the numbers he reported in his recent story, one, singular insurance company, State Farm,  paid out insurance payments to 527 victims JUST IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA THAT YEAR. According toinsurance market share reports, State Farm carries roughly 25% of the Property Insurance Policies in the state of California. So based on this, we can estimate that there were nearly 2100 insurance payments for dog bites -- just in California.

And yet, Clifton's report only notes 402, for the entire country. So again, his own data if making his biggest source of "fame" completely invalid for it's utter incompleteness because the media does not report all major dog bite incidents. The media doesn't (nor should it), and without a complete report, Clifton's data is useless and now, self-contradicting.

Inaccurate info, data out of context, and attempts to mislead

And this is where the last gasp is coming. States continue to take the leadership role in prohibiting breed-specific laws. With all credibility slipping away in favor of listening to real experts, Clifton, and the handful of other haters out there are finding themselves quickly on the wrong side of history. In a last gasp effort, they are flinging out inaccurate and misleading data in hopes of scaring people into not doing what's right, and effective, to try to scare people into being afraid of pit bulls.

It's not working. In response to the letters, and the fear mongering, the Governor of Rhode Island signed the bill prohibiting breed-specific laws in his state into law. 

Knowledge and truth are winning.

Posted at 10:34 PM in Merrit Cliffton, Mythbusting |Permalink

TALKING WITH MERRITLESS

Posted July 19th, 2014 in BSL News and tagged Animal People, Animals 24-7, Breed Identification, Breed-Specific Legislation, Debate, DogsBite.org, Jeff Theman, Josh Liddy, Kim Wolf, Mandatory Spay/Neuter, Merritt Clifton, PETA, Pit Bulls, Statistics by Josh

So last Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Animal Rights 2014 National Conference where Merritt Clifton, former editor of Animal People and current editor of Animals 24-7, was set to co-present on a panel entitled “Moving away from shelter killing.” I know… It seems contradictory to have such a person speaking on such a panel, considering Clifton is a pusher of BSL and the concept of eliminating all Pit Bulls. Anyways, after the panel wrapped up numerous people (including Guilty ‘Til Proven Innocent director Jeff Theman and Kim Wolf from Beyond Breed) had an opportunity to engage Clifton on some of the questionable claims that his “statistics” aim to support.

During a downtime in the panel Kim interjected to ask him a question about his statistics and why they haven’t been peer-reviewed in scientific journals, to which Merritt said that he has “more than 100 peer-reviewed publications.” That’s a dubious claim, at best. Being quoted in a printed or online publication by a source unaware of your lack of credentials doesn’t exactly count. Clifton then claimed that the JAVMA publications, which is a scientific journal that is peer-reviewed, are authored by “paid, professional Pit Bull advocates,” who he claims he’d be happy to debate at any time in a public forum. Um, okay. I’m certainly not a “paid” advocate but I chimed in from the crowd that we’d be attempting to hold him to that. He asked me what my name was, and I told him, and then he called me a heckler who hollers anonymously from the back of the crowd. I repeated my name again, so I don’t know, apparently we have different definitions of the word anonymous.

After the panel wrapped up I approached him and apologized for being a “heckler,” introducing myself and asking him what his deal was against our dogs. He claimed that “you’re not going to reduce the shelter killing of Pit Bulls unless you have breed-specific legislation.” Holy crap. That’s not true. To his point about “needing” BSL, Merritt gave no acknowledgement to the perpetuation of harsh, negative, inflammatory and untrue stereotypes that his cherry-picked (and often unverified) data tries to promote. He paid no attention to the lack of housing, renter restrictions, insurance restrictions, and so on that that stuff constantly feeds. He gave no acknowledgement to how these laws are often actually used as end-arounds to human being profiling. And he paid no attention to the shelter system structure, many of which practice (off the books) in-house BSL, which obviously feeds the shelter killing of Pit Bulls. All of these quite necessary elements were conveniently left out of his explanation as to “why” we need BSL. Not very genuine, to say the least.

At 1:48 Merritt says “when you consider that there are around 150 recognized breeds, for any 1 breed to make up more than 1% is actually significant.” Wow, well that’s odd. Because when dog-banners talk about Pit Bulls they always say that “Pit Bulls ONLY make up 4-6% of the total dog population.” Key word: Only. First of all, that claim is totally untrue and most definitely dwarfed by reality. But even if it was true, Merritt just said that it’s significant for any breed to be over 1% of the dog population, right? But then that rhetoric is conveniently flipped when it needs to serve another purpose, and in an effort to try to claim that there’s not a lot of Pit Bulls that exist in the country. See, if dog-banners admit that there’s a lot of Pit Bulls in existence then they ultimately have to admit that there’s a lot of Pit Bulls that have never harmed anyone. That’s the reality, to the 99.99999 percentile, and no matter the numbers that you want to work with.

At 3:44 he says “very often, a breeder, if a certain dog becomes dog of the year, they’ll just change which dogs mate, so they’ll turn out Goldens 1 year and Chocolate Labs the next, and out of the same mother.” See the dilution of breeds taking place in just that example? I bet if you saw those dogs most people wouldn’t even be able to tell. Just think about that for a second, and how dogs are clearly dogs. Yet Golden Retrievers are held up on their own, and Labradors on their own, and so on and so forth. But what if a Golden Retriever or a Labrador is mixed with a mixed dog, or is mixed with a random dog that someone considers to be a Pit Bull? Is it now a Pit Bull? At what point does it become a Pit Bull? Dogs are dogs folks.

At 4:38 Clifton starts to talk about high-volume, low-cost spay and neuter programs in a way that implies that it was being tried and done in all of these states (he gives both Ohio and New York as examples), but that nobody seemed to want to take advantage of it. This is just fundamentally not true! Kim Wolf, who resides in Brooklyn, intervened to state that in NYC people actually line up at 5am for the clinics but that 2/3rds of those people are normally turned away due to the demand not being able to be met. Her point is that it was incredibly difficult to access these things, and these are the people with the means to access them! Much more pertinent are the lower income folks who may not have the appropriate information or the transportation to get to such an event. Kim’s point aligns pretty well with what I’ve come to understand and see when talking with different communities from California who are being focused on by animal control without being given access to proper resources that would make voluntary compliance far more likely to happen. For instance, in the city of Indio a 2013 spay and neuter clinic which had 40 spots available saw over 500 residents come out in an effort to get their pets sterilized.

At 10:08 Merritt claims that “media reports are the most accurate.” In comparison to what? I then try to ask him why breed remains the primary focus in the face of reckless circumstances like loose dogs, chained yard dogs and unsupervised children. Based on those “media reports” that he claims are the most accurate, 26 of 31 dog-bite related fatalities from 2013 and at least 15 of the 21 from 2014 have involved 1 or more of those 3 reckless (human controlled) circumstances. I tell him that he chooses to focus on breed, which “can’t even be determined.” Obviously I meant that it can’t be successfully determined simply by a media report mention. He says this is not the case. I try to explain that there’s not even a specific or consistent definition of what a “Pit Bull” is, to which he asks me if I can identify Santa Claus… This brings to mind Riverside County’s veterinarian Dr. Allan Drusys and his comparing Pit Bull breed identification to watching pornography, meaning that “you know it when you see it.” Total insanity. Numerous scientific studies reject this notion, including a 2012 study completed by Dr. Victoria Voith. Geneticist Kristopher Irizarry tried to explain this to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors back in October, and they, already having their minds made up prior to even entering the meeting, totally ignored his information.

At 12:00 Clifton makes it seem as if certain dogs come out of the womb pointing, retrieving, fighting. Dog men have stated openly how difficult it is to find a true fighting dog, no matter how they are bred, but Merritt Clifton wants you to believe that every Pit Bull that is born is basically a “fighting” dog. This is a massive load of crap. At 13:22 Jeff directly asks him if he is stating that these dogs were specifically bred for fighting and fighting only. Merritt’s answer? “Basically fighting and baiting.” This, while 99.99999% of all dogs neither fight nor bait in their actual lives. Should I start calling all Latin people reflections of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, just because they may look alike or have the same physical characteristics? Or are people individuals with their own track records and behaviors? This same premise applies to dogs. Dogs are not objects coming off of an assembly line. They are individual dogs!

At 14:31 I ask him if he believes that dogs are individuals, just as a basic principle… Clifton doesn’t really answer, opting to say that “dogs have extremely strong breed-specific characteristics that have been bred into them for years” instead. He then says that people don’t, which makes us all “mutts and mongrels.” He then says that “characteristics and behavior go together,” to which I’d immediately say, well, how do you then account for the actual positive behaviors of the many millions of Pit Bull-type dogs that exist in the country today? He can’t talk out of both sides of his mouth.

At 15:19 he states that he’s been talking to a geneticist that believes that she’s identified the gene that carries the trait for “idiopathic rage,” which they’re now going to try and pin on all Pit Bulls. Clifton states that it “occurs in roughly 1% of the dog population at large, but that it occurs in over 90% of Pit Bulls.” Wait, what? Alert the math police! First of all, based on Merritt’s own 2014 report, Pit Bulls and their mixes make up 6.7% of the dog population. This can in no way be proven, and in reality is likely triple or quadruple that, especially when taking into account how the mainstream media identifies dogs… But anyways, based on Merritt’s 6.7% and a dog population of 70 million, that produces 4.69 million “Pit Bulls.” 5.025 million based on a dog population of 75 million and 5.36 million based on a dog population of 80 million! Now look at their “idiopathic rage” claim again… 1% of a dog population of 70 million dogs is 700,000 dogs (750,000 out of 75 million, 800,000 out of 80 million). Based on Merritt’s own research there’s 4.7 million Pit Bulls in that same 70 million population group. Yet they are trying to pin “idiopathic rage” on Pit Bulls, and stating that it occurs in 90% of Pit Bulls, while at the same time stating that it only occurs in 1% of the total dog population. Using Merritt’s population claim: 90% of Pit Bulls in a total population of 70 million dogs would equal 4.22 million Pit Bulls. 1% of that same dog population equals a total of 700,000 dogs. Their math is ludicrously flawed. Even if every single dog from the “idiopathic rage” group was a “Pit Bull,” that still leaves 3.99 million Pit Bulls! It’s junk science. It’s crap. It’s lies. Just for fun, if we quadrupled Merritt’s estimated amount of “Pit Bulls” from a dog population of 70 million dogs (which is probably far more genuine and honest), that equals 18.76 million Pit Bulls. Now run that number through the same formulation from ^above. You get the point.

At 16:10 Jeff references a behaviorist that appears in his film, and how he states that “we have a lot of genes in our hand, but does it make my hand ball up into a fist and hit you?” Merritt says “if you were better qualified than someone else to be successful, as a behavioral strategy, to ball up your fist and hit somebody, uh, that could evolve the ability to do that successfully, which could evolve into a successful trait.” Keep in mind that Merritt’s claims are based in his belief that all Pit Bulls are dog fighting dogs… Now he’s trying to say that if you were “better qualified” to punch somebody in the face, that that could evolve into a successful gene or trait? I know a lot of people that are “better qualified” to be able to knock someone’s block off if they were to get into a physical fight! Does that mean that they are a fighter? Does that mean that they are a vicious person? Does that mean that they are a detriment to public safety? I mean, where does this type of crap lead? Think about The Rock, think about Jon “Bones” Jones, think about Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao, think about Karl Malone or Ray Lewis, think about any professional athlete, think about any athlete at any level whatsoever! What about anyone over 6’5″, or anyone over 225 pounds? Where does the profiling end? This is all profiling pseudoscience!

At 18:25 Jeff talks about how his dog Preston loves to retrieve (my dog Neola also loves to retrieve). He asks Merritt “is my dog a retriever because he displays that trait, or is he now a Pit Bull because he looks like something?” Based on the road that we’ve been going down, this leaves Clifton kind of flustered. We then get back into his data, which he says comes from “classified ads,” but he leaves out the part about it never being made available to be publicly vetted in any way. I ask him how many dogs are not fatally wounding or mauling someone? He knows that the answer is 99.99999% of them, and no matter the breed or type, but I don’t get that answer. He instead claims that 1 out of every 107 Pit Bulls kills another animal each year. I ask him where that data comes from. He tells me to go to his website. How in the world can anyone even attempt to claim that they know this to be true? There’s literally no possible way to know such a stat, and for numerous reasons. None.

At 20:28 a lady who had been standing around the entire time that we were talking to Merritt chimes in and implies that I don’t want to protect these dogs. Protect them by passing BSL and/or phasing them out/killing them? Very PETA-ish of her. I try to explain how breed-specific mandatory spay/neuter is always rhetorically pitched. She doesn’t care. She says that I “agree with breeding,” and in a way that’s surely meant to make me seem as if I’m anti-spay and neuter. I’m not anti-spay and neuter! I just don’t think it should be mandated upon people (especially in a breed-specific fashion), and for a lot of different reasons that go well beyond a soundbyte or a statement that I could just flippantly toss out. I actually believe in voluntary spay and neuter, and making resources available and accessible, and educating people about those resources. My own dogs are sterilized. So put your simplistic breeder-related stuff back in the drawer. I’m not a breeder. I again try to explain how breed-specific mandatory spay/neuter is rhetorically pitched, which is the main reason why I don’t support it. It’s not to get at shelter killing, it’s not to get at overpopulation. It’s to criminalize the dogs as a whole and phase them out by circumventing state law. Look at California for the finest example. Somehow she doesn’t find any of this relevant. She claims “that’s not a good reason to fight it.” I’d strongly disagree! She says that we should be focused on stopping them from being killed. I’m trying to tell her that they are being killed mainly because of the perpetuated stereotype that continues to exist. At 21:45 Clifton tries to claim that the Pit Bulls coming into shelters are coming in because they’ve “had some kind of an incident.” There he goes again, speaking on behalf of countless individual dogs without having a damn clue about any of them. Unreal. We then get into landlord/tenant issues that are far more complicated than Merritt leads on, but that’s another discussion for another day. Merritt totally misses my point about renting and insurance blockades.

At 22:36 I ask him about a debate for a 2nd time. I’m certainly not a “paid” advocate, like he alluded to earlier, but I’ve publicly (and respectfully) debated in the past. I can’t get him to commit to anything. I offer to fly to Washington. He tells me to send him a “proposal,” but won’t just commit to the premise of at some point doing it. The other lady then interjects and makes a point about why a law is needed, while at the same time admitting that the BSL from the town in which she lives isn’t even enforced. Kim points out that if they won’t enforce that then why/how do you think they’d enforce a mandatory sterilization law?

At 26:15 Clifton basically admits that MSN-BSL and bans are both used for the same purpose, stating that “I don’t see any reason at all to breed Pit Bulls, or any other dog who is inclined or produced to kill or injure other animals.” There he goes again, condemning a massive group of dogs for things that the vast majority of them haven’t done. I try to explain this to both Merritt and the lady, but they state that if it isn’t born then you aren’t condemning it. Um, but you’re not having it be born precisely for the reason that it’s a condemned dog in your own mind! Hello!

This then delves into a side conversation between myself and the lady over dog fighting. She believes that if Pit Bulls cease to exist then the concept of dog fighting would cease to exist. That basically equates to blaming the dogs and ignoring the actual human being and their criminal behavior of illegally fighting dogs. I state that they’d probably just do it with another dog. She says “are you telling me that they’re going to fight Beagles?” Sidebar, but have you ever noticed how often this type of a tactic is used by proponents of regulating dog breeds? For example, if we are talking about fatalities, someone might say “well, is a Chihuahua going to kill somebody?” Um, are Chihuahuas (and in this case Beagles) the only other dogs available to make a valid comparison with? It’s funny that someone picks the tiniest dog in an effort to make their counter-point. There’s about 50 breeds of dog that are LARGER in physical size than a Pit Bull and just as (if not more) capable of killing a human being. That’s a fact.

At 29:59 the lady asks me “what are you looking to see in the end?” She, like PETA, views the concept of dogs as human companions as dogs being exploited. She admits that she wants to end dog companionship, and that that’s the “only” animal rights position. Yikes.

At 31:51 Kim asks Clifton if he has any peer-reviewed research that’s been published in the United States. He claims that he does. He states that he has an award from ProMED. He does, and it was given in 2010 regarding the controlling of the rabies virus in Asia. It’s not for anything relating to dog-related human fatalities, breed-specific legislation, or Pit Bulls, which is what she was specifically asking him about. Clifton explains why he doesn’t publish in JAVMA, but that he does provide data to them as a supporting writer, and states that he doesn’t make his living writing for journals. Kim asks him that if his data is so good then why isn’t he trying to get it published in peer-reviewed journals. He doesn’t really answer her directly. He justifies his publishing decisions by stating that he simply wants to reach the most people. But what if what he’s writing about is flat out wrong, unscientific or not able to be proven? Isn’t that relevant? He doesn’t seem to care much about having his information vetted in these ways, just that it reaches who it reaches. Okay, fair enough. But that’s kind of an incredible evasion of Kim’s point.

At 35:17 I again ask him about a future debate, because at this point my battery is about to die. He again tells me to send him a “proposal” (which I’ve since done).

At 36:23 the lady who had been talking with us brings up PETA. She doesn’t believe what Jeff and Kim are trying to tell her so I try to hand her a sheet of 40 sourced PETA quotations since the year 2000 which have been used to promote breed bans, all forms of breed-specific legislation, and the no adoption policy for shelter Pit Bulls that Ingrid Newkirk has lobbied for. She refuses to take, or even look at, the paper.

At this point we are out in the hallway, and the lady who had been engaged in our conversation for the last 30 minutes incredibly asks me if I’d been videotaping her. She knows that I had been, as any time I would address her I would physically turn in her direction and point my open video camera at her, but she strangely starts to play dumb. She then asks me for my name, and I give it to her, and then she runs off to get staff members in an effort to have them strong-arm me into giving up my memory card so that it could be erased/destroyed. I told them that that wasn’t happening, and that she was watching me record the conversation for damn near 40 minutes! She could have left the open room at any time. Also worth note, she opted to join the ongoing conversation that we were already having with Clifton, not the other way around. She goes on and on about them taking my camera, which they don’t try to do. Now this lady comes unglued and threatens to sue me. You’d think that if people were knowingly being recorded, and chose to stay around, that they then wouldn’t try and pull this type of crap after the fact. Stand on your information/pov! What are you afraid of other people hearing? If you’re correct then I/we should be looking like fools on my own video, right?

 See more at: http://www.swaylove.org/talking-with-merritt-clifton#sthash.jsAZVG3y.dpuf

The Academic Impostor Behind the Pit Bull Hysteria

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The most influential advocate for the eradication of pit bulls is an academic fraud. Merritt Clifton is prominent not simply because he has been making noise for decades, but because he uniquely claims to be a rigorous statistician: a scholarly expert. People who hate pit bulls lean on this man's putative expertise.

And he's a charlatan.

The loudest voice in favor of eliminating pit bulls in Canada is probably Barbara Kay, a journalist with the National Post. Her campaign is largely successful: Canada has some of the most punitive breed-specific laws (BSL) in the world. And she told me proudly, in an email:

My primary source, you will not be surprised to learn, is animal-industry historian and investigative reporter for more than 40 years, Merritt Clifton, until recently editor of Animal People News and now editor of his own site, Animals 24/7. My other primary source is Colleen Lynn of Dogsbite.org.

Colleen Lynn is a menace; she's a web designer who was once bitten by a dog, and has been on a vicious campaign to eliminate the pit bull type ever since. Still, she makes no pretense to academic credibility. Merritt Clifton, on the other hand, very much pretends to be an eminent scholar, and is truly dangerous.

In the first few minutes of the video linked here, for instance, you will see him pronounce: "I have more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications."

This would seem truly impressive -- that's a hefty body of published work. It's troubling, however, that not one of these publications shows up in a search on JSTOR, the comprehensive academic database online. Nor can I find a single example of his copious oeuvre in Harvard's library, which can also be searched online. One hundred publications, admirably invisible.

I finally found one. Clifton mentions Asian Biomedicine in the video, and floating around the internet is a single article that this obscure journal published in 2011. The journal's own website seems to have vanished, but they do say on their Facebook pagethat they are "peer-reviewed." Perhaps there are a hundred such articles? Probably not: a sandbox draft of somebody trying desperately to get Clifton and his projects on Wikipedia lists one academic publication. This one.

The video is posted on a blog maintained by Josh Liddy, an activist against BSL, who notes that Clifton's claims are "dubious." Mr. Liddy is far too polite. These claims are "fictional."

Barbara Kay and I have been having an ongoing email correspondence. My contempt for Clifton has grown over the course of this conversation, and she has been doing her best to prop up his tottering credibility. I do not speak to Clifton directly -- comments I've left on his blog somehow never show up -- but she conveys my disappointment to him, and speaks to me on his behalf.

In response to his boast in the video, Ms. Kay said: "Clifton's remark about peer review was not meant to imply that he had himself written 100 peer-reviewed articles but that he has been cited in many peer-reviewed articles."

Is that so. From Dr. Mark Hogarth, a philosopher of science at Cambridge University: "What he says on the video unambiguously implies he is the author of over 100 different peer-reviewed articles."

And what kind of misstatement is Clifton's? "It's basically the same as lying about your qualifications. Articles are your qualifications."

Merritt Clifton -- the "primary source" for people who are feverishly trying to eradicate pit bulls, like Barbara Kay -- has falsified his credentials.

I tried this out on a few other people intimately familiar with the protocols of academia. Rafael Newman, a classicist and translator with a PhD from Princeton, agreed with Hogarth: "I believe that, in technical parlance, the first statement is known as a 'lie'."

Professor Amy Kaler at the University of Alberta concurred: "Contributing data and being cited is not the same as 'having' publications. You can only claim a publication as yours if you are an author."

Professor Michael E. Harkin at the University of Wyoming -- his PhD is from the University of Chicago -- also agreed: "This is an instance of academic fraud. You cannot conflate these two: the number of peer-reviewed articles authored, and the number of citations."

Dr. Hogarth elaborated upon his observation. This particular genre of lie -- inventing academic qualifications -- is associated with people "like Gillian McKeith."

If you're British, you'll understand this reference: McKeith is a famous television presenter, who describes herself as a qualified nutritionist, while pedaling comically inaccurate science. She was exposed by Ben Goldacre -- a famous scientific fraud-buster. He was interested in her diploma from the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. So he applied for one himself. The diploma was awarded. The vaunted Association was unaware that -- after the proper application and payment -- they had awarded this diploma to Goldacre's dead cat, Henrietta.

I do not mean to suggest that Merritt Clifton is precisely analogous to Goldacre's dead cat. No: Clifton is very much alive and doing mischief.

I made Barbara Kay aware that this article was going to be published, discrediting her "primary source." She was apoplectic: "I am sure I won't be the first one to comment that your bile is not disinterested, your book having received a negative review in Clifton's publication. The highway of literature is strewn with angry screeds against their reviewers and reviewers' hosts by spurned authors of (what they perceive as) Pulitzer Prize material. Once objective readers see that connection, they roll their eyes and move on."

Prepare to roll your eyes, friends. That review was written by one Barbara Kay. She wrote it on July 23. Unfortunately, I have in my files an email that I sent to this same Barbara Kay on July 12, in which I said: "Clifton's elementary math has been proven dismally inadequate by another blogger. This is easy enough for a non-expert to evaluate -- we can all do basic arithmetic. It would be interesting (and I imagine devastating) to have a statistician take a microscope to his methodology."

So. My disinterested interest in Clifton's fraudulence predates Ms. Kay's review. In fact, when you think about it, for her to have written that review -- and for Clifton to have published it on his blog -- was not precisely "disinterested." You might even call it "retaliatory." Or, to be more precise: "a preemptive strike." I'll settle for "unprofessional."

If you read Ms. Kay's review, you'll find that there's very little for me to complain about, personally. I don't feel at all spurned. Some of it is even flattering. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that she has written a review of a book that doesn't yet exist. (I serialized a fraction of an early draft on the Huffington Post.)

I would approve of her lovely review wholeheartedly, if it weren't contributing to mass hysteria: bigotry that results in the unnecessary death, yearly, of some million or so innocent creatures. That is a very rough estimate of how many shelter dogs in America are identified as "pit bulls" -- often with ludicrous inaccuracy -- and then killed.

Apoplectic seems to express itself in oddly similar ways when you question either Clifton or an acolyte. One reader expressed her disappointment in Clifton, and he responded, "Ask me if I give a crap."

Barbara Kay, when I expressed my disappointment, wrote: "Douglas, you are confusing me with someone who gives a shit about whether a good researcher is writing for peer-reviewed academic journals or is simply researching in order to publish his findings on listservs, or as the lead investigative journalist for the venerable Animal Agenda (sic) or for Animal People or for Animals 24-7."

I invite you to look up those publications, to determine just how venerable they are.Clifton was fired from Animal's Agenda, where his wife was an editor. The board felt that it "had become too much the vehicle for one couple's opinions." He then founded the tabloid Animal People. Recently he parted ways with that organization as well; the "editorial and managing group" now consists of three people, two of whom are his ex-wife and son. (Venerability is a family affair.) Animals 24-7 is his blog.

Now, all will be forgiven if Clifton proves to be that remarkable species: an amateur scientist who nevertheless produces rigorous and valuable studies. I have an expert statistician, Mike McCaffrey, prepared to look into Clifton's research to establish whether that is the case: whether Merritt Clifton, despite lying about his credentials, is doing credible work. Mike McCaffrey teaches data librarianship at the University of Toronto, and he explained the issues involved:

The biggest problems are often found in one or more of three areas: collection, presentation, and interpretation. To my mind, collection is the big one when amateurs, especially those with an axe to grind or a position they've staked out in advance, are involved. To be believable, the dataset has to be available in its entirety for examination and the collection methodology had to be described in full. In essence, one must be able to replicate and reach the same conclusion.

And here is what this genuine, qualified expert says that we require, to lay these concerns to rest: "May we see the raw data (a file with all the incidents logged separately with all the variables/characteristics laid out) instead of just the aggregated data (the tallies produced for the report)? If not, why?"

Apparently, Merritt Clifton does make his raw data available. He just refuses to make it available to me. Via Barbara Kay: "The short version is, I have shared my input data with many legitimate researchers over the years, Colleen included. I don't share it with pit nutters."

In shorter: he does not share it with people who disagree with him.

If this data even exists, my guess is that it's embarrassing: inaccurate, incomplete, or incomprehensible. Otherwise, who better to share it with than pit bull advocates ("nutters") -- so that they might be convinced of the error of their ways?

I have given Merritt Clifton plenty of time to defend himself. All I require, I've explicitly said, is the raw data. I've offered to have it examined not simply by an expert of my choice, but -- if he is worried about bias -- also by a qualified expert chosen by him. (By "qualified," I mean someone with qualifications.)

Nothing. Eloquent silence. No data from Mr. Clifton: neither raw nor cooked.

Note that Clifton is no ordinary impostor. He is pretending here to be academically qualified in the realm of epidemiology: a medical field. Reputable analyses of dog-bite statistics are published by specialized doctors -- epidemiologists -- in peer-reviewed scientific publications. Merritt Clifton is worse than your average academic fraud: he is a medical fraud.

I believe the technical term for a medical fraud is a "quack."

If you're interested in what actual epidemiologists have to say, here is an abstract of the most recent academic study: "Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite-related fatalities in the United States (2000-2009)." The study found that "Most DBRFs (dog-bite-related fatalities) were characterized by coincident, preventable factors; breed was not one of these."

This is a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. It is a moderately venerable journal: published by AVMA, the association established in 1863 to represent the nation's veterinarians.

If you watch another couple of minutes of the Clifton video on Josh Liddy's blog, you'll see him refer to this very paper: "That article is actually authored by paid professional pit bull activists."

That's a pretty serious accusation. Liddy sounds unconvinced. So let's examine it.

The lead authors on this article are Gary Patronek VMD, PhD, and Jeffrey J. Sacks, MD, MPH. Dr. Patronek's PhD is in Epidemiology. Dr. Sacks is an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: the official body in the United States devoted to the study and containment of epidemics. Sacks writes about dog-bite issues not simply for JAVMA, but for the CDC itself.

Clifton's charge is that an epidemiologist with the CDC -- a doctor tasked with the study of dog-bite prevention, nationwide -- is for sale. And has been bought by crazed dog lovers bent on making America less safe.

Must be a wacky, free-wheeling bunch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; let's hope nobody slips money to the doctors working on Ebola.

Your choice here is to embrace Merritt Clifton -- a jaw-dropping conspiracy theorist, and a quack who lies about his academic qualifications -- or a specialized medical epidemiologist attached to the national public health institute.

A distressing number of people have sided with the charlatan. Merritt Clifton's quackery is the research underlying breed specific legislation across North America. Pit bulls are being banned, confiscated and killed based on numbers that have no demonstrable foundation in reality.

We are plagued these days by superstitious zealots who prefer cranks to experts. Epidemiology in particular seems to suffer from this -- all sorts of people take Jenny McCarthy more seriously than they do tenured professors at Harvard Medical School. The sheer disdain for actual expertise is depressing: Barbara Kay dismisses Dr. Sacks as a "guru." Excuse me? He's a specialized medical doctor on staff at the most important body in America charged with preventing epidemics.

If I need heart surgery, I go to a heart surgeon -- not some Clifton-like crank who has personal theories about how heart surgery really should be done, and who dismisses actual heart surgeons as biased and corrupt.

It's frankly shocking that it's come to this. Canadian legislators would seem to be influenced strongly by Barbara Kay of the National Post -- we certainly see all sorts of worthless breed-specific legislation that echoes her fear-mongering agenda. And this is a woman who announces with pride that her venomous articles rest on "statistics" ginned up and pushed by an impostor, Merritt Clifton.

Perhaps it is time to revisit the Canadian laws.

__________________________

Clarification (7:10pm EST, 9/24/2014): I've received a bizarre request -- perhaps the most bizarre in the time I have been writing about animal welfare -- but a journalist wishes me to clarify that she has less influence than I have ascribed to her.

Barbara Kay was not writing about pit bulls when the Canadian laws were initially passed, but I was under the distinct impression that she was crucial to recent efforts to thwart repeal. These efforts have been absurdly successful, and the article above indeed implies that her voice was integral to this achievement. She wrote this to me in an email, today: "Yes, you can tell your readers that I was in no way responsible for the bans being put in place. As for my influence regarding any failures to repeal the bans, I have no idea if or how much such influence would be."

This is correct, and I did conclude that she was influential, without demonstrable proof. My apologies. In order to be absolutely accurate, I inquired: "Would Merritt Clifton too like me to suggest that his influence is limited? Which of course would demonstrate that the publications he edits and writes for are impotent."

Her response: "No, Merritt would not like you to suggest he has no influence. I am sure he does have influence."

I hope this clarifies the matter.

__________________________

NOTE: The blogger who dissected Clifton's math, Brent Toellner, has written at length about various Clifton inaccuracies. I recommend his article: "Misusing data to support personal agendas", as well as the piece linked to above: "Merritt Clifton -- when the numbers just don't add up".

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Another Expert Dispels Myths, California Vet Expert Weighs In On Pit Bulls Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1546437/another-expert-dispels-myths-california-vet-expert-weighs-in-on-pit-bulls/#6SzMw7MJVbVmjB6B.99

image: http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Another-Expert-Dispels-Myths-California-Vet-Expert-Weighs-In-On-Pit-Bulls-665x385.jpg

With all the violent pit bull imagery, especially with the recent Modesto case, it is hard to imagine sometimes that pit bulls are anything other than the vicious, savage animals. The Inquisitr previously reported on the case in central California.

KCRA in Davis, California, reported on Dr. Liz Stelow, a behavior specialist at the U.C. Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Stelow, the vet expert, had a surprising commentary on pit bulls while discussing the Modesto attack. According to the California vet expert, pit bulls are not as vicious as they seem, despite the constant negative news that many have come to be bombarded with.

“I tend to see a lot more aggression in shepherds than I see in pit bulls. Pit bulls aren’t necessarily more or less aggressive than other dogs. However, when they attack, they are capable of inflicting much more harm than a Jack Russell or other terrier breed. The way a dog is treated by its owner has as much – or more – to do with its behavior than the type of breed it is”

The vet expert explained that the environment they were brought up in helped cultivate the attack the in Modesto on Tuesday. Unfortunately, according to Los Angeles Times, the owner of the four pit bulls involved in the attack might not face criminal chargers. Animal control officials told KCRA that stigma and misunderstandings surrounding the breed make it impossible for shelters to place pit bulls in good homes, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Like the California vet expert, a Montana behaviorist has also tried to dispel the stigma surrounding the breed. The Inquisitr reported on Aditi Terpstra, who explained that there are at least two mistakes that are made by reports and the media.

“The most common misunderstanding that most people have about Pit bulls is that the very breed itself is instinctively born with a violent disposition, which as Ms. Terpstra explained is a vague description. According to Terpstra, the American Temperament Test Society suggests otherwise.”

She goes onto explain that besides the misunderstanding of temperament, some do not understand what a pit bull looks like at all. Pit bull, in and of itself, is not a breed. It refers to several canines under the bully breed banner that can be mistaken for each other at times. There are times where a dog is a pit bull mix, thus causing confusion, but does not reflect specifically on any one breed.

In essence, the pit bull breed continues to be a scapegoat for people who do not properly take care of or train their animals. One can only hope that dog fighting rings will cease. Hopefully, things will change, with many groups such as Ghetto Rescue FFoundation helping to take care of and find homes for pit bulls.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1546437/another-expert-dispels-myths-california-vet-expert-weighs-in-on-pit-bulls/#6SzMw7MJVbVmjB6B.99