Clifton’s own “study” disproves his assertions. His own tally of severe and fatal dog attacks includes over 50 different types and breeds of dogs. It seems clear that dogs of all types can have “bad moments” that result in severe injury.
Clifton concludes in his article that he “[does] not know how an effective, fair, enforceable, humane dangerous dog law could be constructed.” He goes on to propose breed-specific legislation as the solution to dangerous dogs, yet provides no scientific evidence that BSL actually works.
Merritt Clifton’s study is a medley of newspaper articles from 1982 through 2007 that present a very biased and inaccurate overview of dog bites. It is more of an incomplete tally of severe bites than a study.
Media was the only source of data. Clifton’s only source for his findings is the media, and he focuses on cases that required “extensive hospitalization.” This term is never defined in his article. It might mean stitches, or it might mean amputation.
Clifton's study was missing data. In the beginning of the study, Clifton states that attacks by police dogs, guard dogs, dogs trained to fight, and dogs whose breed may be uncertain are excluded. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume a good number of attacks are not included. This might leave the reader with the assumption that Clifton has included all other dog attacks.
The CDC reports in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that of the “333,700 patients treated for dog bites in emergency departments in 1994, approximately 6,000 were hospitalized.” (July 4, 2003 article at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5226a1.htm)
However, Clifton only lists 2,363 bites total—and that is over the 25 years that he has tallied media reports of attacks.
If approximately 6,000 people require hospitalization each year because of a dog attack, then over 25 years, there would have been 150,000 people hospitalized. Yet Clifton has apparently only found media reports for 1.6% of all these attacks.
Clifton’s report therefore implies that the remaining 98.4% of bites that required “extensive hospitalization” according to the CDC were by non-identifiable types of dogs or police, guard, or fighting animals. This is highly unlikely. Clifton’s data is so incomplete as to make it virtually useless for analyzing patterns related to severe dog attacks.
On Clifton’s list of all dog attacks and the dogs’ breed, he makes several miscategorization and misidentification mistakes.
He lists the Australian Blue Heeler, the Australian Cattle Dog, the Blue Heeler, and the Queensland Heeler as separate breeds. These are all different names for the same breed. Listing these attacks under separate breed names skewed the results of the study.
It should be noted that Clifton does not attempt to divide pit bull attacks into separate breed names. If he were to do so, it is not clear what his study results would show; “pit bull” is a generic term for at least three different breeds of dogs, and dozens of other breeds are often lumped into the “pit bull” category based on their similar appearance.
There are also 33 attacks that were supposedly done by “Bull Mastiff (Presa Canario).” Bull Mastiffs and Presa Canarios are distinctly different breeds, and if there is question about which breed the dog is, this attack should not be listed as a “clearly identified breed.”
The report also attempts to identify the predominant breed in dogs. Clifton gives no reason as to why he listed an attack as being done by an Akita/Chow mix instead of a Chow/Akita mix. How did he determine that Beagle was the predominant breed in the attack done by a Beagle/German Shepherd Dog?
Clifton makes several spelling mistakes throughout his report. Misidentified breeds listed as: “Chox mix,” “Dauschund,” “Doge De Bordeaux,” “Fila Brasiero,” “Buff Mastiff,” “Great Pyranees,” and “Weimaeaner” compromise Clifton’s credibility.
In Clifton’s analysis, he attempts to evaluate dog behavior based on breed, bite frequency, and “degree of relative risk.” Yet, Clifton has shown numerous times in his report that he cannot identify a breed properly, or even spell breed names correctly. This is a clear inability to determine risk scientifically.
Both bite frequency and degree of relative risk are impossible to calculate. No one knows how often breeds bite since hundreds of bites go unreported. And to attempt to determine a “degree of relative risk,” Clifton would have to know every factor that contributed to every dog bite.
Even the CDC concluded at the end of their own flawed study (see above) that there is no way to determine relative risk:
There is currently no accurate way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed, and consequently no measure to determine which breeds are more likely to bite or kill.
Merritt Clifton apparently does not understand the many factors that go into a reliable calculation of relative risk, nor does he wish to acknowledge that trained researchers realize that many, if not most, of those factors can never be known or calculated.
Misapplied and misinterpreted data. Clifton’s analysis section is full of faults and absurd assumptions.
Of the breeds most often involved in incidents of sufficient severity to be listed, pit bull terriers are noteworthy for attacking adults almost as frequently as children. This is a very rare pattern...Pit bulls seem to differ behaviorally from other dogs in having far less inhibition about attacking people who are larger than they are.
As discussed, Clifton has tallied less than two percent of all severe dog attacks. He clearly has no idea how frequently pit bulls—or any other type of dog, for that matter—bite.
Furthermore, without knowing all bite factors, including the dog’s health, condition, sexual state, training, environment, and the behavior of the victim, there is no way Clifton could possibly conceive any possible pattern or difference as to who pit bulls attack.
Since Clifton is tallying media articles, his conclusion seems to be more telling of media coverage of dog bites. If one was to assume that the media is more likely to publish a pit bull attack than an attack by another type of dog, and more likely to publish an attack on a child than an attack on an adult, it stands to reason that while media-reported pit bull attacks include both adults and children, media reports about other types of dogs’ attacks may only be considered newsworthy when a child is involved. Thus, it may appear that pit bulls are overrepresented in attacks on adults.
Misunderstanding of dog behavior and ignorance about breed standards
They [pit bulls] are also notorious for attacking seemingly without warning, a tendency exacerbated by the custom of docking pit bulls’ tails so that warning signals are not easily recognized. Thus the adult victim of a pit bull attack may have had little or no opportunity to read the warning signals that would avert an attack from any other dog.
All dogs exhibit warning signs. Pit bull expert Diane Jessup, a retired animal control officer and police dog trainer, stated in her book The Working Pit Bull, “all Pit Bulls do give some warning that they are going to attack.”
Studies have indicated that, generally, people do not understand dog body language. A person may not recognize that a dog standing very still, legs apart, tail waving slowly, is indicating an impending attack. When one cannot identify all possible threat behaviors, it might appear that a dog is attacking without warning. Clifton provides no evidence to show that victims are oblivious to impending attacks by pit bulls at a greater rate than impending attacks by other dogs.
Clifton’s statement that pit bulls’ tails are customarily docked demonstrates his lack of familiarity with the breed-type. A list of traditionally docked breeds can be found on the Council of Docked Breeds website (http://www.cdb.org/list.htm). None of the pit bull breeds, to include the American Pit Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, and the Staffordshire Bull Terrer, can be found on this list. Nor can any of the breeds that are occasionally mistaken to be “pit bulls,” such as the American Bulldog, Bull Mastiff, and Bull Terrier. Tail docking has neverbeen common or customary with any of the pit bull types. Docking the tail of an American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier or Staffordshire Bull Terrier means immediate disqualification from the show ring.
To substantiate his assertions that:
1) pit bulls customarily have their tails docked, and 2) tail docking results in an inability for people to read canine body language
Clifton would need to provide evidence that a disproportionate number of pit bulls or attacking dogs have had their tails docked, and further, that a dog’s tail is the primary predictor of an impending attack. He provides no such evidence.
There are over 50 different breeds of dogs, including the Cocker Spaniel, Airedale Terrier, German pointer, Jack Russell Terrier, Poodle, and Corgi, whose tails are traditionally docked. (Council of Docked Breeds) If tail docking inhibits the communication of impending aggression, why are tail-less breeds not disproportionately represented in any list of severe and fatal attacks?
Excuses for some breeds’ behavior...
Rottweilers...seem to show up disproportionately often in the mauling, killing, and maiming statistics simply because they are both quite popular and very powerful...
Clifton excuses Rottweilers’ attacks due to the fact that they are both popular and powerful. Yet pit bulls, who are also popular and strong, are not given this same excuse.
In the German shepherd mauling, killing, and maiming cases I have recorded, there have almost always been circumstances of duress: the dog was deranged from being kept alone on a chain for prolonged periods without human contract, was starving, was otherwise severely abused, was protecting puppies, or was part of a pack including other dangerous dogs. None of the German shepherd attacks have involved predatory behavior on the part of an otherwise healthy dog.
Here Clifton excuses German Shepherd attacks due to outside factors. This implies that no other type of dog in his study attacked because it was left neglected, abused, chained or left untrained and unsocialized. Yet he offers no proof to substantiate the idea that all other cases he recorded involved trained, socialized, beloved family pets.
It is sheer foolishness to encourage people to regard pit bull terriers and Rottweilers as just dogs like any other, no matter how much they may behave like other dogs under ordinary circumstances.
Clifton implies that pit bulls and Rottweilers no longer behave like dogs under extra-ordinary circumstances. What those extra-ordinary circumstances are is unstated, and how pit bulls and Rottweilers suddenly become behaviorally different under those circumstances is not demonstrated in the report.
To imply that pit bulls and Rottweilers are not to be regarded as dogs even though they act like ordinary canines is absurd. Clifton’s agenda is quite clear—he badly wishes to portray pit bulls and Rottweilers as somehow unique—but his “study” is so flawed that he cannot prove any of his sweeping generalizations.
Temperament is not the issue, nor is it even relevant. What is relevant is actuarial risk.
Here Clifton returns to the idea that, somehow, we can calculate the “riskiness” or “relative danger” of particular breeds or types of dogs. As demonstrated earlier in this article, it is not possible to do this.
Furthermore, it is totally bizarre to say that temperament is not an issue. Temperament plays a huge part in dog attacks, as any canine behaviorist or dog bite researcher would agree. A very large dog may be able to do a lot of damage if it bites someone, but if the dog is extremely placid by nature (temperament), there’s very little danger to the public. On the contrary, a smaller dog may do less damage if it attacks, but if it is extremely aggressive, it could maul or kill someone. To suggest that temperament isn’t even relevant is ridiculous.
If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed—and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.
Clifton’s own “study” disproves his assertions. His own tally of severe and fatal dog attacks includes over 50 different types and breeds of dogs. It seems clear that dogs of all types can have “bad moments” that result in severe injury.
In conclusion, Clifton concludes in his article that he “[does] not know how an effective, fair, enforceable, humane dangerous dog law could be constructed.” He goes on to propose breed-specific legislation as the solution to dangerous dogs, yet provides no scientific evidence that BSL actually works.
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and the “pittie party” that’s a good one … because it describes DBO and her members to a T…
Of all the terms invented by Ms. Lynn (Dogsbite.org) to insult and degrade “pit bulls” and their owners, the term that should have caused Dr. Bini, his collaborators, and the staff of the Annals of Surgery, the most concern was the term “science whore,” to describe their Veterinary counterparts who happened to have made statements about “pit bulls” in which Ms. Lynn found disagreeable.