Post Written by ARLP volunteer extraordinaire Larry H~

Numbers never lie….but they don’t always tell the whole truth either!

Humans seem to have the unique ability to learn and create strong beliefs based on the experiences of others. This is a very powerful tool that allows humans to pass on vast amounts of knowledge and share experiences with that can educate and enrich the lives of others. However, it can also be the source of great misinformation and lead people to believe things that are not always true. Case in point, at one time humans thought the earth was flat.

In addition to forming very strong feelings and opinions on the experiences of others we humans also have the ability to draw conclusions based on data that we collect ourselves or are furnished by others. Much like our ability to share experiences with others the conclusions we come to can often times be very inaccurate. The very nature of our ability to come to conclusions seems to vary greatly from person to person and it is heavily influenced by our own personal experiences as well as the experiences of others that have been passed on to us.

Humans rely on language to communicate and can convey great detail but it also leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation. Lets look at the following example…..

Lets say you are out shopping for a new car, if I asked you, “how much does it cost?”, what is the correct answer? Is the cost of a car the price you pay the dealer? Does the cost include sales tax? Does the cost include title and license fees? What about fuel economy, insurance, maintenance costs etc and other costs associated with owning the car?

If someone purely looks at the sticker price of the car one may come to the conclusion that a car with a cheaper purchase price will “cost less” but what if it gets poor fuel economy and is more to insure and has more expensive maintenance costs? Does the car really “cost less”?

The answer to the above questions is “it depends”. It depends on exactly what it is your talking about. The next question is “what does all this car talk have to do with dogs?”.

The answer is that for those of us who own a breed of dog that is often the target of breed discrimination we always have people quick to condemn our dogs based on partial facts, assumptions and the experience of others; rarely do they look at the whole picture.

People are quick to adopt the notion that certain breeds of dog are inherently more vicious than others because when the media reports on a dog bite incident they seem to single out specific breeds, putting them in the spotlight while ignoring attacks from other breeds . Other sources of information that often get used to back up peoples point of view are bite statistics or more accurately the number of bites (or deaths) reported to have been caused by a certain breed.

Many people will look at a list of dog bite incidences and see that one breed has more bites to its name than another and based on that information alone come to the conclusion that that breed is inherently more dangerous. This can be a very dangerous conclusion. While the statistics that led to this conclusion may be accurate from a purely statistical point of view, they do not convey a complete picture. Just like the sticker price of a car does not accurately convey how much a car costs to own. Lets take a second and look at an example to display just how inaccurate using only the number of dogs bites can be.

Lets take 2 breeds of dog, breed A and breed B. Lets say in the last year our local animal control collected data and they released a report stating that breed A was responsible for 100 bites and breed B was responsible for 10 bites.

Breed A = 100 bite reports
Breed B = 10 bite reports

At a glance most people would clearly jump to the conclusion that the breed with 100 bites to its credit is the breed more likely to bite but is that assumption accurate? Maybe, but what if I presented you the following additional data?

Breed A has a population of 20,000 animals = 100 bite reports Breed B has a population of 15 animals = 10 bite reports

Based on this new data you likely changed your opinion on which breed is more dangerous but is the new conclusion any more accurate than the first?

Truth be told almost every report being tossed around lacks accurate population data to accompany the bite statistics and without this population data how can you be certain you are coming to the right conclusion?

To further complicate things dogs and humans do not live in a vacuum. There are many things that affect dog behavior such as how they were raised and the temperament of their parents. This data is never included but can be the most critical element when trying to evaluate the stability of a dog. With that in mind let me toss out another example by adding more data to breed A and B.

Breed A has a population of 20,000 animals = 100 bite reports / 100 different dog owners.
Breed B has a population of 15 animals = 10 bite reports / all 10 dogs owned by same person

Ok, now looking at the additional info furnished what conclusion do you come to? I would bet that many people are now back to thinking that breed B isn’t all that dangerous after all since all 10 bites came from dogs owned by a single person.

Socioeconomic variables are the hardest to quantify and without them you simply can not draw an accurate conclusion yet people draw conclusions every day and viciously stand by their claims even though they are based on partial data. If we look back out our own human history and we can see that there used to be a very strong opinion that women and people of minority were inferior. In most countries this discrimination is now against the law because it can be damaging emotionally and physically and can be detrimental to the pursuit of happiness that all of us in the USA are entitled to. History has shown us that people are people regardless of their sex or ethnicity.

Regardless of what history has told us about people being people regardless of sex or ethnicity you can still dig up facts, that when observed in a vacuum and not taking anything else into account can lead to some pretty startling assumptions.

For example, According to the Bureau of Justice, at midyear 2008, there were 4,777 black male inmates per 100,000 black males held in state and federal prisons and local jails, compared to 1,760 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 727 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.

For those of you still clinging to your partial data and condemning a breed of dog for being predisposed to violence do you also feel that the above data indicates that certain minorities are genetically predisposed to being criminals? Or has history taught you that the Bureau of Justice data, while accurate in and of itself, does not paint a complete picture and that there are many socioeconomic factors that affect the numbers reported?

By now I am hoping that you realize that the Bureau of Justice data does not paint a complete picture and that there are many socioeconomic factors at work here. If you are still clinging to the notion that some breeds are still more predisposed to violence than others how can you admit those socioeconomic factors exist and have a dramatic impact on people but not dogs they own?

Filed under: Observations & Reflection