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Diet_Coke t1_iy65q3a wrote

Source: dogbites dot org - tells you everything you need to know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogsbite.org

In her book Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon, author Bronwen Dickey writes that DogsBite.org accuses several organizations of being "co-opted by the 'pit bull lobby', a shady cabal that supporters of the site imply is financed by dogfighters."[14] In an interview with Psychology Today, Dickey says "The site's founder is also contemptuous of people in the relevant sciences, including those at the AVMA, the CDC, the Animal Behavior Society, etc. She refers to them as 'science whores,' which alone is enough to discredit her claims."[15]

In an article in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, R. Scott Nolen states that "DogsBite.org's claim that pit bull–type dogs were responsible for 65 percent of the deaths during that 12-year period (2005-2016) is disputed by some groups as inaccurate and misleading. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, for example, says identifying a dog's breed accurately is difficult, even for professionals, and visual recognition is known to not always be reliable."[2]

Radio Canada accused DogsBite.org of being critical of scientific experts and of using the term "science whore". Colleen Lynn, the site's founder, responded by saying that the term does not come from her[16] and that it has only been used three times since the creation of the site in 2007.[17] Radio Canada also criticized DogsBite.org for counting as a death caused by pit bulls the death of a man who died in 2007 from atherosclerosis and problems with alcohol four months after he was severely injured by pit bulls.[18][17]

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rvasatxguy t1_iy67p4r wrote

They do have their detractors, but even still, stats consistently list pit bulls at the top, & sad head lines like this one almost always involve pit bulls. Not always, but most of the time and that correlates with many of the results of the studies that are done.

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Diet_Coke t1_iy68uzm wrote

They have their detractors because it's a website run by someone with an axe to grind who has no background in statistics. Do we even have to go over why 'it matches the headlines' is a poor argument and open to so many different sources of bias?

Go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States

And look at 2022

And you will see that yes, there are pitbulls and mixes but there are plenty of other breeds as well as dog packs and unknown breeds. You will also see that pitbulls and pitbull mixes aren't the majority, and that is despite there being way more pitbulls than almost any other breed on there.

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rvasatxguy t1_iy6af8p wrote

I think they have an axe to grind because of tragedies like this one. And this comes on the heels of those little kids in TN getting mauled to death by the family pit bulls two months ago. So yeah people can always split hairs on these studies but this breed is always doing real damage. Other breeds can nip and bite and they do, but mauling is another story.

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Diet_Coke t1_iy6b6vx wrote

They actually have an axe to grind because they were mauled by a pitbull. Their own trauma is being expressed through violence on a mass scale because they advocate breed bans. Kind of ironic in a way.

Please note, you're throwing around the word 'studies' but haven't shared anything except for a website run by someone with no background in statistics. If you wanted to look at statistics on race and crime in humans, would you start on a neo-nazi website?

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rvasatxguy t1_iy6emt1 wrote

https://preview.redd.it/8pcpol7wau2a1.jpeg?width=811&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=80e863bc6223ffbd4148b1eb6f075f93d112f4e9

I mean something tells me you’re gonna keep refuting it. But charts/studies like this are all over. Then the headlines come out. And sometimes it’s a labrador or a german shepherd. They’re also on the chart. I don’t think its even close.

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oh_hello_rva t1_iy7y0bs wrote

A+, u/rvasatxguy.

If anybody's genuinely curious about DogsBite and any of the other statistics, simply go to the site and follow the links to local news stories. See if you think they're all a hoax, or just regular local journalism about deaths in their communities. Follow up and send questions to them if you want to.

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rvasatxguy t1_iy9fbip wrote

Yeah that site has all the links to dog related maulings. Crazy how many of those are pit bulls. Those dogs do more damage than most other breeds.

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Diet_Coke t1_iy87ybb wrote

My dude, I literally handed you a refutation on a silver platter. Look at the wikipedia link. All you have to do is scroll down, there's a column for breed. Anyone with MS Paint can make a bar graph, it is just not a source. The source on yours, Animals 24-7, looks like an alarmist publication, go to their website and the literal first story is "“We can’t live like this in a world where dogs eat children”. Come the fuck on.

Here's one issue with relying on media reports as a source: dog breeds are highly likely to be misclassified. If a boxer attacks someone and a bystander thinks it was a pitbull, that is going to get reported as a pitbull attack. The CDC stopped collecting dog breed information in bite statistics because it is so difficult to accurately classify.

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