From Dogs with Jobs, Season 2 Episode 2 ~6:00
streaming on netflix
Pit bull authority Diane Jessup on the use of pit bulls as police K9s.
12.15.2014
Famous Pit Bull: Popsicle
"Finding a drug odor is called an alert. Most dogs alert by scratching but true to his pit bull nature, Popsicle prefers to indicate narcotic odors by biting or chewing at the location of the smell. If Rudy weren't quick to intervene, Popsicle could rip the source of the suspicious scent to shreds."
From Dogs with Jobs, Season 2 Episode 2 ~6:00
streaming on netflix
Pit bull authority Diane Jessup on the use of pit bulls as police K9s.
From Dogs with Jobs, Season 2 Episode 2 ~6:00
streaming on netflix
Pit bull authority Diane Jessup on the use of pit bulls as police K9s.
3.02.2014
The Truth About Pit Bull Owners
Myth 39: The serious to fatal damage the aggressive breeds inflict when they attack isn’t due to their genes, but rather due to having the wrong kind of owners.
We’ve seen that the killing bite and unpredictable, uncontrolled aggression are genetically anchored in these dogs, and that they can’t be taught not to execute killing behaviour. They inevitably reach a certain age when they start to do it, looking for opportunities and excuses to do what we have bred them to do (see Myth 38). If you’re lucky, the first attack will be on your cat or another dog, and not on your child. This killing behaviour is not caused by the owner in individual cases; it’s just part of what the dog is. However, the killing behaviour is caused by certain people’s consumer behaviour. By buying these dogs, these people are responsible for making it economically profitable to breed for the killing bite and the hair trigger. Are these people all “the wrong kind of owners”?
The answer to this question lies in the kind of person who wants a dog with the killing bite in the first place. So who are they?
Well, in fact, they are the wrong kind of owners. Take a look around you. It’s mostly a group of people who – for some reason related to their personal psychology – specifically want a dog whose breed standard explicitly states that the breed has been selected for extreme aggression. Often these are people with an inferiority complex of some kind. They want something that will finally enable them to intimidate other people. They have an ego problem, and need to prove something to the world. Many are men who are (perhaps unconsciously) worried about their masculinity, that maybe the world won’t see it. Others are adolescents who watch too much MTV and learn that an aggressive dog is an essential consumer item, just like the Nikes, if he wants to keep up his macho hip-hop or skater’s image. Sometimes they are naïve people, who think all dogs are cuddly plush toys. None of these people have any idea of behavioural conformation (see Myth 38), of the unity of mind and body Nature gives to all creatures, and they are all, in their own way, consumed by vanity.
Experience (of which this author has a lot, alas) teaches that the owners of aggressive breeds can be divided broadly into three categories.
1) We all know there are people who try to conceal their inner feelings of inadequacy by acting extra tough outwardly. Many of them nowadays go buy a “tough” dog. These people, who are struggling with an inferiority complex or an ego problem, then try to force their pit bull/Am Staff (or Presa, or Dogo, etc.) on you because they feel the world owes them recognition. Many of us have experienced this. You try to avoid these people (and their dog) on the street or in a park, but they follow you, determined to inflict the dog upon you. (After all, what’s the use of having this proof of Manliness around if no one will look at it?) They cross the street to follow you so you can’t avoid a confrontation. Their dog runs up to yours in a park, and they refuse to call it when you ask them to. Usually, the dog wouldn’t obey anyway, and they don’t want this embarrassing fact revealed to you. But above all, they enjoy your worry about what their aggressive dog will do. They shout at you to stop acting so weird about their dog. They get angry, and they often get verbally aggressive. It is of extreme importance to these people to force their dog on you, because their need is so great to show the world they know better than everyone else. The dog is the way they can seek arguments and win for a change, since they never succeed in doing this on their own strength. When their dog does attack another dog and try to kill him, they are dumbfounded, because they really are too stupid to understand what these dogs are all about. Their cowardice surfaces – they don’t dare interfere with their attacking dog, and once it’s over, they disappear as quick as they can. Often you never see them in the park again, which is great, except for the fact that someone’s normal, peace seeking dog had to pay with his life first. But some of them don’t disappear for good. Some of them actually enjoy watching their dog’s aggression, and just make sure they’re gone before the police arrive. Tomorrow they’re back again, and blaming you for having called the police. There have been cases in which the owner of the attacked dog was terrorized as punishment for reporting the attack to the police, to the extent that the owner of the horribly wounded dog had to move to a different neighbourhood. Finally, many of the people in this category of aggressive dog lovers enter their dogs in illegal pit fights, a phenomenon which has resurfaced in many of our cities since these dogs became so widespread. Some of these specifically go to places where other dogs come, in the hope that if their aggressive-breed dog practices on your cocker spaniel, he’ll do better in the pit.
2) These are young adolescent male humans, who have reached the brink of adulthood but aren’t there yet. The adolescent male is searching for his identity and trying to get himself a satisfying spot in his peer group. The adolescent doesn’t always have bad intentions, but his brain isn’t ripe yet, and he isn’t yet capable of understanding the consequences of his actions (which is also the reason he has to pay so much more for car insurance than the rest of us). He sees the macho rapper on television, accompanied by the aggressive dog, and he wants one, too. After he’s finished saving up for Nikes, he saves up for a dog. He has no idea what he’s bought once he has the dog, thinking it’s just another consumer item. To him the dog isn’t any different than his other fashion accessories, to him the dog is a thing that will – just like his Portable Play Station – turn on and off if you press the button. The adolescent is, by virtue of his age, a bit rebellious. He is exploring various boundaries, sometimes pushing the envelope in his search for an identity. He just loves to show adults that he won’t do what they ask him to do, but that he makes his own decisions. Of course he won’t leash his dog just because some grown-up makes the request, are you kidding, what a loss of face! He isn’t prepared for it when his dog attacks a person or another dog, and he doesn’t know what to do. His toy is suddenly acting up. So he does nothing, offers no help, doesn’t dare interfere with his dog, and most probably just gets the hell out of Dodge as quick as his little adolescent legs will carry him. Adolescence is an age of natural egotism, and a time when even sympathetic boys often lose their ability to empathize with others for a while. So this kid isn’t capable of imagining the suffering the attacked dog goes through, nor the grief of the dog’s owner. He’s just glad his parents didn’t find out about what happened, otherwise they might take his dog away. “Tomorrow’s another day, hey, don’t be so serious about life, and besides, what could I do about it? The dog did it, not me.”
3) These are the Egotistical Innocents. They are members of animal protection clubs and humane societies. They read lots of sentimental stories about animals, and they watch lots of programs on Discovery Channel. They believe that all animals are sweet-natured cuddly toys. These people’s egocentricity is different from the adolescent’s. These people think they are the measure of all things, and they therefore believe that if a dog is nice to them, well, it means he’s nice, period. How the dog behaves towards others isn’t so important. The Egotistical Innocent lives in a fairy tale, failing to see that a dog is a living being with a will and personality of his own, and that the dog hasn’t been informed of the fairy tale. The Innocent is reinforced in the fairy tale by breeders who agree that the stories about these dogs are all lies, after all, look how sweet he is to the prospective buyer. The Innocent doesn’t understand what “fierce protector of home and hearth, averse to strangers” means, doesn’t know a secret language has been developed since these breeds started causing so much tragedy. She likes the idea of proving to all the world that even these dogs fit her fairy tale, and that they are the poor victims of vicious anti-animal propaganda. The Egotistical Innocent is delighted with her puppy and sees him as a sort of four-legged human baby. She doesn’t see that the pup is playing in an abnormally aggressive way at the age of eight weeks already. She is dumbfounded on the day when her “puppy,” who meantime is actually a young dog, suddenly, out of the blue (because the warning phase has been bred out of these dogs), launches an unbridled attack on another dog and seriously wounds or kills the other dog. She is stricken and disillusioned – not only about the suffering of the attacked dog, but also because her fairy tale has caved in. But not to worry. It only takes her a few days to restore her view of the world. She decides her dog is as sweet as she’d thought after all. After thinking awhile, she realizes the whole thing was the other dog’s fault. After all, the other dog growled at her sweetie, so what else could her sweetie do but defend himself? Sometimes the Egotistical Innocent will cry out that German shepherds bite too, or that even a dachshund can be dangerous under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, there is always a way for people who don’t want to face realities. The great tragedy is that the Egotistical Innocent’s dog will harm or kill many other dogs, because she continues to take him to dog parks, in the belief that it’s up to the other dogs to make sure they don’t get killed.
Fact: This Myth is true in the sense that these dogs always have the wrong owners, people who shouldn’t have a dog in the first place. However, this Myth is false because it’s the genetics of the dog that make him a killer, regardless of what kind of owner he has. In other words, these dogs aren’t killers because they have the wrong owners, rather they attract the wrong owners because they are killers.
Brown, S-E, The human-animal bond and self-psychology: Toward a new understanding, Society & Animals, electronic version, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2003.
Burrows, TJ, Fielding, WJ, Views of college students on pit bull “ownership”: New Providend, The Bahamas, Society & Animals, Vol. 13, No. 2, 139-152, 2005.
Frommer, SS, Arluke, A, Loving them to death: blame-displacing strategies of animal shelter workers and surrenderers, Society & Animals, Volume 7, Number 1, 1999.
Peremans, K, Functional brain imaging of the dog; single photon emission tomography as a research and clinical tool for the investigation of canine brain physiology and pathophysiology, Universiteit Gent, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Gent, 2002. http://www.uznuclear.ugent.be/research/phd_dissertations/Functional_Brain_LowRes.pdf
Oral history collected from dog owners in The Hague, 1994-2009.
From: Semyonova, A, The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs, The Hastings Press, England, 2009, pages 125 – 127. (Check side bar for purchasing options)
Recommended reading to enhance your understanding of this serious problem:
On pit bulls and their owners. Kenneth Phillips, 17 Barks, September 5, 2013
Personality and Behavioral Characteristics of Owners of Vicious Breeds of Dog. Kenneth Phillips, dogbitelaw.com
Vicious dogs: the antisocial behaviors and psychological characteristics of owners. Ragatz L1, Fremouw W, Thomas T, McCoy K., Journal of Forensic Sciences. 2009 May; 54(3):699-703.
Vicious Dogs Part 2: Criminal Thinking, Callousness, and Personality Styles of Their Owners. Allison M. Schenk B.A., Laurie L. Ragatz M.S., William J. Fremouw Ph.D, A.B.P.P, Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume 57, Issue 1, pages 152–159, January 2012
Ownership of high-risk ("vicious") dogs as a marker for deviant behaviors: implications for risk assessment. Barnes JE1, Boat BW, Putnam FW, Dates HF, Mahlman AR. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 2006 Dec; 21(12):1616-34.
Psychological Characteristics Owners of High Risk for Aggression Dog Breeds. Stanley Coren. Psychology Today, March 16, 2009
Do Owners and Their Dogs Have Similar Personalities? Stanley Coren. Psychology Today, August 20, 2013
What an Aggressive Dog Says About its Owner. Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience, May 24, 2012
Owners of Aggressive Dog Breeds Are More Hostile. Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, August 09, 2012
2015 World Dog Show – Turmoil Amongst American Staffordshire Terrier Crowd, The Canine Chronicle, June 19, 2015
We’ve seen that the killing bite and unpredictable, uncontrolled aggression are genetically anchored in these dogs, and that they can’t be taught not to execute killing behaviour. They inevitably reach a certain age when they start to do it, looking for opportunities and excuses to do what we have bred them to do (see Myth 38). If you’re lucky, the first attack will be on your cat or another dog, and not on your child. This killing behaviour is not caused by the owner in individual cases; it’s just part of what the dog is. However, the killing behaviour is caused by certain people’s consumer behaviour. By buying these dogs, these people are responsible for making it economically profitable to breed for the killing bite and the hair trigger. Are these people all “the wrong kind of owners”?
The answer to this question lies in the kind of person who wants a dog with the killing bite in the first place. So who are they?
Well, in fact, they are the wrong kind of owners. Take a look around you. It’s mostly a group of people who – for some reason related to their personal psychology – specifically want a dog whose breed standard explicitly states that the breed has been selected for extreme aggression. Often these are people with an inferiority complex of some kind. They want something that will finally enable them to intimidate other people. They have an ego problem, and need to prove something to the world. Many are men who are (perhaps unconsciously) worried about their masculinity, that maybe the world won’t see it. Others are adolescents who watch too much MTV and learn that an aggressive dog is an essential consumer item, just like the Nikes, if he wants to keep up his macho hip-hop or skater’s image. Sometimes they are naïve people, who think all dogs are cuddly plush toys. None of these people have any idea of behavioural conformation (see Myth 38), of the unity of mind and body Nature gives to all creatures, and they are all, in their own way, consumed by vanity.
Experience (of which this author has a lot, alas) teaches that the owners of aggressive breeds can be divided broadly into three categories.
1) We all know there are people who try to conceal their inner feelings of inadequacy by acting extra tough outwardly. Many of them nowadays go buy a “tough” dog. These people, who are struggling with an inferiority complex or an ego problem, then try to force their pit bull/Am Staff (or Presa, or Dogo, etc.) on you because they feel the world owes them recognition. Many of us have experienced this. You try to avoid these people (and their dog) on the street or in a park, but they follow you, determined to inflict the dog upon you. (After all, what’s the use of having this proof of Manliness around if no one will look at it?) They cross the street to follow you so you can’t avoid a confrontation. Their dog runs up to yours in a park, and they refuse to call it when you ask them to. Usually, the dog wouldn’t obey anyway, and they don’t want this embarrassing fact revealed to you. But above all, they enjoy your worry about what their aggressive dog will do. They shout at you to stop acting so weird about their dog. They get angry, and they often get verbally aggressive. It is of extreme importance to these people to force their dog on you, because their need is so great to show the world they know better than everyone else. The dog is the way they can seek arguments and win for a change, since they never succeed in doing this on their own strength. When their dog does attack another dog and try to kill him, they are dumbfounded, because they really are too stupid to understand what these dogs are all about. Their cowardice surfaces – they don’t dare interfere with their attacking dog, and once it’s over, they disappear as quick as they can. Often you never see them in the park again, which is great, except for the fact that someone’s normal, peace seeking dog had to pay with his life first. But some of them don’t disappear for good. Some of them actually enjoy watching their dog’s aggression, and just make sure they’re gone before the police arrive. Tomorrow they’re back again, and blaming you for having called the police. There have been cases in which the owner of the attacked dog was terrorized as punishment for reporting the attack to the police, to the extent that the owner of the horribly wounded dog had to move to a different neighbourhood. Finally, many of the people in this category of aggressive dog lovers enter their dogs in illegal pit fights, a phenomenon which has resurfaced in many of our cities since these dogs became so widespread. Some of these specifically go to places where other dogs come, in the hope that if their aggressive-breed dog practices on your cocker spaniel, he’ll do better in the pit.
2) These are young adolescent male humans, who have reached the brink of adulthood but aren’t there yet. The adolescent male is searching for his identity and trying to get himself a satisfying spot in his peer group. The adolescent doesn’t always have bad intentions, but his brain isn’t ripe yet, and he isn’t yet capable of understanding the consequences of his actions (which is also the reason he has to pay so much more for car insurance than the rest of us). He sees the macho rapper on television, accompanied by the aggressive dog, and he wants one, too. After he’s finished saving up for Nikes, he saves up for a dog. He has no idea what he’s bought once he has the dog, thinking it’s just another consumer item. To him the dog isn’t any different than his other fashion accessories, to him the dog is a thing that will – just like his Portable Play Station – turn on and off if you press the button. The adolescent is, by virtue of his age, a bit rebellious. He is exploring various boundaries, sometimes pushing the envelope in his search for an identity. He just loves to show adults that he won’t do what they ask him to do, but that he makes his own decisions. Of course he won’t leash his dog just because some grown-up makes the request, are you kidding, what a loss of face! He isn’t prepared for it when his dog attacks a person or another dog, and he doesn’t know what to do. His toy is suddenly acting up. So he does nothing, offers no help, doesn’t dare interfere with his dog, and most probably just gets the hell out of Dodge as quick as his little adolescent legs will carry him. Adolescence is an age of natural egotism, and a time when even sympathetic boys often lose their ability to empathize with others for a while. So this kid isn’t capable of imagining the suffering the attacked dog goes through, nor the grief of the dog’s owner. He’s just glad his parents didn’t find out about what happened, otherwise they might take his dog away. “Tomorrow’s another day, hey, don’t be so serious about life, and besides, what could I do about it? The dog did it, not me.”
3) These are the Egotistical Innocents. They are members of animal protection clubs and humane societies. They read lots of sentimental stories about animals, and they watch lots of programs on Discovery Channel. They believe that all animals are sweet-natured cuddly toys. These people’s egocentricity is different from the adolescent’s. These people think they are the measure of all things, and they therefore believe that if a dog is nice to them, well, it means he’s nice, period. How the dog behaves towards others isn’t so important. The Egotistical Innocent lives in a fairy tale, failing to see that a dog is a living being with a will and personality of his own, and that the dog hasn’t been informed of the fairy tale. The Innocent is reinforced in the fairy tale by breeders who agree that the stories about these dogs are all lies, after all, look how sweet he is to the prospective buyer. The Innocent doesn’t understand what “fierce protector of home and hearth, averse to strangers” means, doesn’t know a secret language has been developed since these breeds started causing so much tragedy. She likes the idea of proving to all the world that even these dogs fit her fairy tale, and that they are the poor victims of vicious anti-animal propaganda. The Egotistical Innocent is delighted with her puppy and sees him as a sort of four-legged human baby. She doesn’t see that the pup is playing in an abnormally aggressive way at the age of eight weeks already. She is dumbfounded on the day when her “puppy,” who meantime is actually a young dog, suddenly, out of the blue (because the warning phase has been bred out of these dogs), launches an unbridled attack on another dog and seriously wounds or kills the other dog. She is stricken and disillusioned – not only about the suffering of the attacked dog, but also because her fairy tale has caved in. But not to worry. It only takes her a few days to restore her view of the world. She decides her dog is as sweet as she’d thought after all. After thinking awhile, she realizes the whole thing was the other dog’s fault. After all, the other dog growled at her sweetie, so what else could her sweetie do but defend himself? Sometimes the Egotistical Innocent will cry out that German shepherds bite too, or that even a dachshund can be dangerous under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, there is always a way for people who don’t want to face realities. The great tragedy is that the Egotistical Innocent’s dog will harm or kill many other dogs, because she continues to take him to dog parks, in the belief that it’s up to the other dogs to make sure they don’t get killed.
Fact: This Myth is true in the sense that these dogs always have the wrong owners, people who shouldn’t have a dog in the first place. However, this Myth is false because it’s the genetics of the dog that make him a killer, regardless of what kind of owner he has. In other words, these dogs aren’t killers because they have the wrong owners, rather they attract the wrong owners because they are killers.
Brown, S-E, The human-animal bond and self-psychology: Toward a new understanding, Society & Animals, electronic version, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2003.
Burrows, TJ, Fielding, WJ, Views of college students on pit bull “ownership”: New Providend, The Bahamas, Society & Animals, Vol. 13, No. 2, 139-152, 2005.
Frommer, SS, Arluke, A, Loving them to death: blame-displacing strategies of animal shelter workers and surrenderers, Society & Animals, Volume 7, Number 1, 1999.
Peremans, K, Functional brain imaging of the dog; single photon emission tomography as a research and clinical tool for the investigation of canine brain physiology and pathophysiology, Universiteit Gent, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Gent, 2002. http://www.uznuclear.ugent.be/research/phd_dissertations/Functional_Brain_LowRes.pdf
Oral history collected from dog owners in The Hague, 1994-2009.
From: Semyonova, A, The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs, The Hastings Press, England, 2009, pages 125 – 127. (Check side bar for purchasing options)
Recommended reading to enhance your understanding of this serious problem:
On pit bulls and their owners. Kenneth Phillips, 17 Barks, September 5, 2013
Personality and Behavioral Characteristics of Owners of Vicious Breeds of Dog. Kenneth Phillips, dogbitelaw.com
Vicious dogs: the antisocial behaviors and psychological characteristics of owners. Ragatz L1, Fremouw W, Thomas T, McCoy K., Journal of Forensic Sciences. 2009 May; 54(3):699-703.
Vicious Dogs Part 2: Criminal Thinking, Callousness, and Personality Styles of Their Owners. Allison M. Schenk B.A., Laurie L. Ragatz M.S., William J. Fremouw Ph.D, A.B.P.P, Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume 57, Issue 1, pages 152–159, January 2012
Ownership of high-risk ("vicious") dogs as a marker for deviant behaviors: implications for risk assessment. Barnes JE1, Boat BW, Putnam FW, Dates HF, Mahlman AR. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 2006 Dec; 21(12):1616-34.
Psychological Characteristics Owners of High Risk for Aggression Dog Breeds. Stanley Coren. Psychology Today, March 16, 2009
Do Owners and Their Dogs Have Similar Personalities? Stanley Coren. Psychology Today, August 20, 2013
What an Aggressive Dog Says About its Owner. Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience, May 24, 2012
Owners of Aggressive Dog Breeds Are More Hostile. Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, August 09, 2012
2015 World Dog Show – Turmoil Amongst American Staffordshire Terrier Crowd, The Canine Chronicle, June 19, 2015
2.07.2014
The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs - Alexandra Semyonova
Myth 99: Scientists know what they are talking about because they study animals in an objective way.
We have seen that many scientists who make statements about dogs have never really studied dogs. Many of them simply adopted our Nazi Nobel Prize winner’s story about dogs, ignoring the fact that the man’s specialty was birds. Some simply went along with the idea that once you’ve looked at wolves, you don’t need to look at dogs. The scientists who have studied dogs have done it either in highly unnatural circumstances (the lab), or they’ve only watched the dogs for short intervals. But all the same, they make sweeping – and, as we have now seen, incorrect – statements about the domestic dog, claiming to know what it is and how it works. We have all been taught to believe that science is able to protect itself from such blunders. So the question arises as to why science has been blundering along this way about dogs, producing more fantasy than facts about them. In this chapter, we’ll look at a number of the things that are behind this.
A huge, almost religious romance has been built up around science in our day. This romance states that science is in the business of constantly turning itself upside down and inside out in the search for truth. We look at scientists with awe, as if they are a special species and a sort of super humans. The fact is, scientists are ordinary human beings just like the rest of us. And just like the rest of us, scientists have egos. They are subject to pressure to produce, same as the rest of the labour force. Publishing articles fast and frequently helps a scientist’s career more than less frequent, but more valid, publications would. Like us, scientists want to be able to pay the mortgage, keep the kids at the private schools and buy a new car next year. Research funding and university jobs are scarce, and there is fierce competition for them. The older generation is ever watchful that the ideas of some young, coming colleague don’t overturn their own, old theories, the ones they’ve built their senior careers on. It’s not so hard to keep some uppity young thing from getting a teaching position. It isn’t hard to prevent a younger colleague from publishing, or at least to delay this, and if this fails, well, you can always manipulate the citation index (see text box below).
As a result of all this, science, itself, is organized in a strictly structured (and enforced) hierarchy – scientists spend their lives moving within a dominance hierarchy they are never allowed to forget, always watching out whether they are stepping on higher ranked toes. For example, at scientific congresses, an insider can see at a glance who the Alpha leaders are just by looking at the seating arrangement. The closer to the front, the higher the rank. You ask difficult questions of those sitting behind you, but not those in front of you. You interrupt those behind you to correct a mistake, but not those in front of you. If you disobey these rules, you run the risk of torpedoing your own chances of getting good teaching or research positions, of being cited enough to count, and thus of ever building a scientific career.
The citation index
The fact that both academic career and scientific prestige are so dependent on publishing has led to the churning out of much trivial, irrelevant or even spurious work. Under the publish or perish pressure, some scientists have gone so far as to falsify data. Some have even published articles about research that never really took place. In the end, the problem of low quality publications reached such proportions that publication alone was abandoned as a criterion for estimating a researcher’s worth. Privately, inside the club, some of the most brilliant scientists openly acknowledge that you have as much chance of finding quality work in the scientific journals as you do on the Internet, where any nut (be it a brilliant nut or be it just a nut) can write and publish as s/he pleases. As both university administrators and the general public began to get wind of this problem, a solution had to be found – some way to more validly estimate the quality of a researcher’s work. They came up with the citation index. This is published by organizations that keep track of how much one scientist’s published work is cited by other scientists in their footnotes and bibliographies. The presumption is that scientists will tend to use high quality work as sources for their own. This presumption was justified by the fact that Nobel Prize winners turned out, up to 1965, to indeed have been cited about 40 times as often as other colleagues (despite the fact that these Nobel Prize winners only published about five times as much).
But of course, water always seek the lowest level – and scientists are, just like the rest of us, about 60% water. Once the citation index was instituted as a basis for getting jobs and prestige, people immediately began manipulating the index. All you have to do is cite your friends and ignore your competitors whenever possible. Yet again, this has taken such a flight that no one really takes the various indexes entirely seriously anymore. Some scientists openly and publicly ridicule them, while others (guess who) avidly defend them. Everyone recommends, at any rate, not using them as the sole measure of a researcher’s scientific worth.
End text box
In a nutshell, science is partly an honest search for founded knowledge, but it is also partly a complicated ritual dance about ranks and status and damned be the truth. And of course, the young scientist must, like all young animals, survive in the environment s/he lives in. It is, thus, not so easy to contradict a Nobel Prize winner (at least not while he’s still alive). And when you live and move daily in a world that is organized by the principle of a strict dominance hierarchy and ever-guarded ranks, it’s not so easy to see when you are projecting this onto others (in particular when the others can’t speak to correct you).
Then there’s a second problem with the objectivity of science: scientists are still mostly men. We all know (and it has been proven repeatedly) that men tend to use competitive strategies in dealing with group membership, whereas women tend to use cooperative strategies. As we look at the world around us, we all refer to our own inner experience and motivation as we try to understand and explain it. It can’t be otherwise, this is true of all humans. Our own experience of the world affects which things we find important enough to study at all, which questions we then pose, which things we think are relevant (and thus which things we count), and how we interpret whatever results our studies turn up. Because of this, it’s inevitable that the pretty much exclusive presence of men in science has led to some distortions in the way the world is researched and interpreted. This might not be so important when we’re looking at non-living things, but when it comes to interpreting the behavior of living creatures this is a serious failing. This projection of purely male, competitive psychology onto reality has given us many faulty theories about the world of the living. The theory that non-human animals are constantly constructing competitive hierarchies isn’t the only one. Freud’s theory that incest doesn’t really occur, that this is just four-year-old girls having fantasies about sleeping with their fathers, came from the same place.
Then there’s this other thing about having mostly men do science. Recent research (published by The Scientific American) has shown that men engage in science in a different way than women do. Men are more preoccupied with career building and tend to be focused on publishing a lot and fast. Women tend to be more concerned with doing really thorough research, even if this slows down their rate of publication. In other words, women tend to do better science than men, but the rules of the game mean that this slows down their careers. This doesn’t mean that all men are inferior scientists. It does mean that it isn’t always the best scientists who end up at the top of the hierarchy, with the most prestige.
When we are talking about the sciences that study animal behavior, there is a third thing that gets in the way of objectivity. We now know that science often attract people who have various, more or less serious, autism related disorders, perhaps in particular Asperger’s syndrome. This turned out, in 2006, to be the explanation for a small epidemic of autistic disorders among school-going children in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. A world wide electronics company had established a large scientific research centre in that city, which – as it turned out – had attracted an unusual concentration of parents (scientists employed by the company) who themselves suffered from these heritable disorders. One of the typical symptoms of these disorders is that the bearer has difficulty with social and communicative skills. They often have difficulty conceiving of the other as a living being with its own inner world of knowledge, feelings, beliefs and intentions that are not the same as his/her own: they lack the ability to feel empathy. They tend to have difficulty with social and emotional reciprocity. People with these disorders are particularly bad at reading non-verbal language and social signals. Because of this, they often have trouble responding appropriately in social contexts or communicating their own inner world. There has not yet been any large scale investigation into exactly how many scientists have autism related disorders, nor whether they are concentrated in particular fields of study. Until these questions are answered, it is probably a good idea to be reserved about believing any statements scientists make about the behavior of animals. First we need to know how many of the observers we have appointed to this task are really capable of understanding another’s behavior at all.
But we aren’t done yet. When we are talking about animals, we are talking about non-verbal creatures, whose only means of expressing themselves is body language. Among humans, about seventy percent of the information that is conveyed in a conversation is conveyed non-verbally, by our facial expressions, tone of voice, body postures and positions. Among animals, one hundred percent of the information is conveyed this way. Now of course, not all scientists have autism related problems with this – but it remains a problem that most scientists are men. Men in general are infamously (and scientifically proven) bad at reading what we call body language, at any rate they are much worse at it than women. So it is, yet again, questionable whether we can and should put our trust in what are, evidently, our least capable observers when we want to understand the behavior of animals.
If we take all of the above together, this may explain why so many scientists still, some three hundred fifty years later, embrace Descartes’ view of the animal as a machine, a sort of program-driven automaton that is without feelings, without any kind of thoughts, completely different and separate from humans. It is, in scientific circles, still taboo to contradict this idea. The word “anthropomorphic” appears instantly as a reproach, and as proof that you must be fairly worthless and quite misguided as a scientist. [Anthropomorphism means assigning human qualities to non-human objects.] This is often still the case even when it’s about something as evident as the fact that other mammals feel pain. The accusation of anthropomorphism is usually paired with ridicule and laughter.
Because of all this, science moves only very slowly in correcting the flaws I point out in this book. We know now how similar our anatomies and brains are to those of other animals (and where they aren’t similar), including the functions of all kinds of body and brain structures, processes and parts. We know now that we differ genetically from a rabbit only by about fifteen percent – which means that a large number of our own genes are executing the same programs they execute in other animals. Despite this, scientists are still amazed when, for example, a creature as simple as a crow is able to make plans, to use tools and to complete complicated tasks (a thing any farmer could have told them three hundred years ago, had they bothered to ask, and if they hadn’t laughed so contemptuously at him). And, after watching the crow make plans, use tools, and do complicated assignments, they still continue to insist that the same crow is unable to feel (for example) pain as we feel it. In a nutshell, science now has to deny many known facts because of adopting an incorrect viewpoint three hundred fifty years ago, one which is now very difficult to abandon without great loss of face. But of course, it could be less nefarious. It could be a kind of innocence operating. It could be that scientists are just genuinely unable to adapt to changes, preferring to continue their repetitive movements according to their set pattern, because they are semi-autistic and can’t understand the meaning of it all, or why it would matter anyway. The ridiculing laughter may be nothing more than the defensive autistic panic reaction when confronted with a part of the universe they aren’t even able to perceive, let alone understand. This, too, is possible.
Another reason science moves so slowly is the obsession with measurement and quantification. You might think you see a thing, but it doesn’t really exist until you have measured it. This is something that fits into the pattern of autism, but it is also (to be fair) a kind of honest hope that measurement and quantification will (albeit magically) insure objectivity. This wouldn’t be so bad if scientists had said you don’t understand a thing until you’ve measured it. But alas, this isn’t what they came up with, and this is a source of huge problems with science. Many aspects of reality are simply denied as even existing, simply because we can’t measure them (yet). The shock at discovering how few genes we have and the conclusion that we really aren’t so different from other animals as we thought, is just one example. Another problem is that the fixation with quantification leads science to focus on things we can measure instead of concentrating on things that are really relevant. A question that can’t be answered with quantitative data and a statistics program, in an article of not more than seven pages length (including diagrams and tables), is set aside – you can’t publish about it anyway, so why be interested? Even scientists are complaining that this attitude has led to stagnation in the formation of theory in favour of measuring all kinds of irrelevant trivia. A final problem is that if you want to measure aspects of living beings, you have to create highly artificial circumstances and situations. This means your measurements no longer reflect the real world, and that your measurements are, therefore, very often irrelevant or even banal. This has sometimes led to surprising results, to the measurement of things that turned out not really to exist – things that were a temporary result of the artificial circumstances, which ceased to exist as soon as the artificial circumstances are removed. The dominance hierarchy within a wolf pack is an example of this. Our puppies fighting over a bone in the lab is another one.
Fact: Scientists have forgotten that one of the things they should be observing most (if they want to claim objectivity) is their own behavior. They have forgotten to watch out for how their own psychology is determining what they see. They have been too unaware that they are, like any other animal, projecting their own inner world onto the outer world and calling this the only true reality.
Fact: So there we are. There are huge unsolved problems in the sciences. All kinds of human interests, biases, and limitations play a bigger role than we acknowledge, despite sometimes honest attempts to correct these. We would all do well to keep a healthy dose of scepticism as we listen to what the scientists are telling us about dogs. You don’t have to (and can’t) assume you always know better, but you can – just to be sure – refrain from letting them talk you into doing anything that you suspect may be cruel.
Animals “projecting”
Most animals do not have the large areas of the brain that give us our abstract cognitive abilities. Most animals don’t seem to have an abstract sense of self and other, nor the ability to abstractly think about themselves or themselves vs. the other. Animals operate within their perception of the world, without being able to stand back and observe themselves. They can’t think, “Gee, maybe the other is living in a different world of perception.”
As a result, many animals will interpret the behavior of another animal according to their own inner world. Some examples to clarify. When dogs bare their teeth, they are telling the other that they want distance and will use their weapons for it if they have to. When chimps bare their teeth, they are telling the other that they feel afraid. Unless the animal has a long learning experience of what it means when we show our teeth, the animal will respond as if our smile means the same thing it means for the animal’s own species. When a human smiles at a dog, many dogs take this to mean the human is hostile. When we smile at a chimp, a chimp may take this to mean we are fearful. The animals react to our approach accordingly, and according to the rules that govern their behavior with their own kind.
So male human scientists are just another kind of animal. They look at an animal and think, “when I behave that way, it means I have such-and-such a motive, so the animal must have that same motive now, too.” And then they tell us to respond according to our human rules, just as any other non-cognitive animal would respond according to its own rules. The fact that scientists are so quick to accuse others of anthropomorphism illustrates how unconscious their own projections are.
Burgoon, JK, Buller, DB, Woodall, WG, Nonverbal communication: The unspoken dialogue,McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, NY, 1966.
Carson, G, Men Beasts and Gods: A History of Cruelty and Kindness to Animals, Charles Scribner,NY 1972.
Chomsky, N, Language, Politics, and Composition, an interview of Chomsky by Gary A.Olson and Lester Faigley, Journal of Advanced Composition, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1991. accessed Dec 2013.
Cohen, E, Law folklore and animal lore, Past and Present 110: 6–37, 1986.
Dahles, H, Game killing and killing games: An anthropologist looking at hunting in
modern society, Society & Animals, Vol.1 No. 2, 1993.
Darnton, R, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Vintage NY, 1985.
Dawkins, MS, Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare, Methuen, NY, 1981.
Dawkins, MS, Through our eyes only? The search for animal consciousness OUP, 1995.
De Boo, M, Onbereikbare toga; in het Wageningse landbouwereldje kwamen geleerdevrouwen niet aan de bak, NRC Handelsblad, 31 mei en 1 juni 2003, Wetenschap enOnderwijs, p.41.
Descartes, R, Treatise of man (1629), translated by Thomas Steel Hall, Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge MA, 1972.
Descartes, R, Animals are machines, in Armstrong, SJ, and Botzler, RG, eds. Environmental ethics: Divergence and Convergence, McGraw-Hill, NY, pp 281–285, 1993.
Erwin, J, Deni, R, Strangers in a strange land: Abnormal behaviour or abnormalenvironments? in Erwin, J, Maple, T, Mitchell, G, (eds): Captivity and Behaviour, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, NY, 1979, pp 1–28.
Engell, J, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism, Harvard University Press,Cambridge MA, 1981.
Finkelstein, JJ, The ox that gored, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 71 pt 2,1981.
Firestone, S, De dialectiek van de sekse: Het argument voor de feministische revolutie,UitgeverijBert Bakker, Amsterdam, 1979.
Fox, MW, (ed) Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, WB Saunders & Co, Philadelphia, 1968.
Friedman, DF, ‘Does altruism produce efficient outcomes? Marshall vs.Kaldor 1987, pub2002. accessed Dec 2013.
Goodloe, LP, Issues in description and measurement of temperament in companion dogs,in Voith, VL, Borchelt, PL, eds Readings in Companion Animal Behaviour,Veterinary Learningsystems Co. Inc., Trenton NJ, 1996: 32–39.
Greer, G, De vrouw als eunuch, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1972. (Original title: The Female Eunuch.)
Greer, G, Het lot van de vrouw: De politiek van de menselijke vruchtbaarheid, Meulenhoff,Amsterdam, 1984. (Original title: Sex and Destiny. The Politics of Human Fertility.)
Guerrero, LK, DeVito, JA, Hecht, ML, (eds), The nonverbal communication reader: Classic and contemporary readings, Waveland, Prospect Heights IL, 1999.
Hajer, M, Vliegen door verzwavelde rook; de universiteiten moeten zelf hun maatschappelijke onderzoek bepalen, NRC Handelsblad, 16 en 17 februari 2002, Wetenschap enOnderwijs p.39.
Hart, BL, Hart, LA, Selecting pet dogs on the basis of cluster analysis of breed behavioural profiles and gender, JAVMA 186[11]: 1181–1185, 1985.
Hart, BL, Hart, LA, Selecting the best companion animal: breed and gender specific behavioural profi les, in The pet connection: Its Influence on Our Health and Quality of Life,Anerson, RK, Hart, BL, Hart, LA, (eds) University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984, pp180–193.
Hart, BL, Miller, MF, Behavioural profiles of dog breeds: A quantitative approach, JAVMA 186[11]: 1175–1180, 1985.
Herek, GM, The instrumentality of attitudes: Toward a neofunctional theory, Journal of Social Issues, 42: 99–114, 1986.
Hills, AM, The motivational bases of attitudes toward animals, Animals & Society, Volume 1 No.
2, 1993.
Holton, G, Different perceptions: Women approach research with care but their low
publication rate crimps their careers, Sc Am April 1998.
Icke, V S-baan, NRC Handelsblad, 7 rn 8 juni 2003, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p. 36.
Ivy, DK, Backlund, P, Exploring genderspeak, MeGraw-Hill Companies Inc., NY, 1994.
Katz, D, The functional approach to the study of attitudes, Public Opinion, Quarterly 24:163–204, 1960.
Koelewijn, J, De Koning, P, De inktwerking van autisme in families; spaghetti met
tomatensaus, NRC Handelsblad, 7 en 8 juni 2003, p.24.
Koenen, L, De ontmaskering van Nim Chimpsky; profiel van een gedreven wetenschapper, M: het maandblad van NRC Handelsblad, maart 2003 pp 24–32.
Kollontaj, A, De positie van de vrouw in de ontwikkeling van de maatschappij: Veertien lezingen aan de Sverdlov universiteit, Het Wereldvenster Bussum, 1982.
Kuhn, TS, The Structure of Scientifi c Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL, 1962.
Lattal, KA, A century of effect: Legacies of EL Thorndike’s Animal Intelligence, Monograph, JEAB 70: 325–336, 1998.
Lucas, C, Quantifying complexity theoryaccessed Dec 2013.
Maturana, HR, The organisation of the living: A theory of the living organisation, International Journal of Man- Machine Studies, Vol 7 1975, pp 313–332.
Maturana, HR, Biology of language: the epistemology of reality, in Miller, GA, andLenneberg, E, (eds.) Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought: Essays in Honor of EricLenneberg, Academic Press, NY, 1978, pp 27–63. < http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/maturana/BofLanguage.pdf > accessed Dec 2013.
Maturana, HR, and Varela, V, Autopoiesis and cognition: The realisation of the living, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Cohen, RS, and Wartofsky, MW, (eds.) Vol. 42 Dordrecht: D.Reidel Publishing Co., 1980.
Meijer van Putten B Verzwijgen maakt beter; fibromyalgie verdwijnt als niemand erover reptNRC Handelsblad 7 en 8 juni 2003 Onderwijs en Wetenschap p37.
Mesterton-Gibbons, M, On the evolution of pure winner and loser effects: a game-theoreticmodel, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology,61 1151–1186, (1999).
Midgley, M, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosphy Vol 54, No. 210, Oct 1979.
Mulvaney, Becky Michele, ‘Gender differences in communication: An interculturalexperience’.acessed Dec 2013.
Newman, G, The Punishment Response, J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1978.
Nibert, DA, Animal rights and human social issues, Society & Animals, Volume 2 No. 2, 1994.
Nicholson, J, Mannen en vrouwen: Hoe verschillend zijn ze? Het Spectrum, Amsterdam, 1984.
Phillips, MT, Savages, drunks and lab animals: The researcher’s perception of pain, Society &
Animals, Volume 1 No. 1, 1993.
Phillips, MT, Sechzer, JA, Animal Research and Ethical Conflict, Springer-Verlag, MY 1989.
Regan, R, Singer, P, (eds) Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976.
Ritvo, H, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987.
Rollin, B, Animals in experimentation: Utilitarian objects pets or moral objects, Anthrozoos 3: 88–90, 1989.
Royce, JR, A factorial study of emotionality in the dog, Psychol Monogr Gen Appl 69: 22 (Whole No. 407), 1955.
Rubin, L, Vrouwen mannen en intimiteit, Uitgeverij Maarten Mutinga, Amsterdam, 1985.
Sanders, C, Understanding Dogs: Caretakers’ attributions of mindedness in canine-human relationships, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22 2: 205–226, 1993.
Sanders, CR, Biting the hand that heals you: Encounters with problematic patients in a general veterinary practice, Society & animals, Volume 2 Number 1, 1994.
Sax B, What is a ‘Jewish dog?’ Konrad Lorenz and the cult of wildness Society & Animals, Volume 5 Number 1, 1997.
Shaw, GB, The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh, 1932.
Shapiro, D, Understanding dogs through kinesthetic empathy social construction and history Anthrozoos 3: 184–195, 1990.
Skinner, BF, The Behaviour of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc, NY, 1938.
Skinner, BF, Science and Human Behaviour, The Free Press (a division of Macmillan Publishing Co.) NY, 1953.
Skinner, BF, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Prentice-Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,1969.
Skinner, BF, About Behaviourism, Alfred A. Knopf Inc, NY, 1974.
Smit, C, Dierproeven: honderd jaar discussie, La Riviere & Voorhoeve Kampen, NL 1989.
Smith, WJ, The Behaviour of Communicating, Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA, 1977.
Sonnert, G, Advocating women: why should women be encouraged to pursue science? The arguments keep changing, Sc Am, April 1998.
Sonnert, G, Where’s the difference? Are women treated differently or are they simply different? Sc Am, April 1998.
Strumwasser, F, The relation between neuroscience and human behavioural science, JEAB 61: 307–318, 1994.
Thomas, K, Man and the natural world: A history of modern sensibility, Pantheon Books, NY, 1983.
Van Delft, D, Heel de schepping op een schoolbord, M: het maandblad van NRCHandelsblad januari 2003, pp 40–49.
Van Delft, D, ‘Wij Nederlanders hakken terug’, NRC Handelsblad, 6 en 7 augustus 2005, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p.17.
Van Hooff, JARAM, Wensing, JAB, Dominance and its behavioural measures in a captive wolf pack, in Man and Wolf, Frank, H, ed, Dr W Junk Publishers, Dordrecht, 1987 pp 219–252.
Varela, FJ, Principles of Biological Autonomy, Elsevier, (North Holland), NY, 1979.
Varela, FJ, Autonomy and autopoiesis, in Roth Gerhard and Schwegler (eds.) Self-organising Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Campus Verlag Frankfurt/NY, 1981 pp 14–23.
Varela, FJ, Thompson, E, and Rosch, E, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1991.
Visser, H, Publieke opinie als chaos; Van Ginneken over snelle meningsverschuivingen, NRC Handelsblad, 11 en 12 mei 2002, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p 37.
Voltaire, F, A reply to Descartes, in Regan, T, Singer, P, (eds.) pp 67–68, reprint from Voltaire, F, Philosophical Dictionary ‘Animals’.
Worster, D, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1995.
Semyonova's book is available at
Hastings Press
Dogwise
amazon U.K.
U.S. amazon kindle
We have seen that many scientists who make statements about dogs have never really studied dogs. Many of them simply adopted our Nazi Nobel Prize winner’s story about dogs, ignoring the fact that the man’s specialty was birds. Some simply went along with the idea that once you’ve looked at wolves, you don’t need to look at dogs. The scientists who have studied dogs have done it either in highly unnatural circumstances (the lab), or they’ve only watched the dogs for short intervals. But all the same, they make sweeping – and, as we have now seen, incorrect – statements about the domestic dog, claiming to know what it is and how it works. We have all been taught to believe that science is able to protect itself from such blunders. So the question arises as to why science has been blundering along this way about dogs, producing more fantasy than facts about them. In this chapter, we’ll look at a number of the things that are behind this.
A huge, almost religious romance has been built up around science in our day. This romance states that science is in the business of constantly turning itself upside down and inside out in the search for truth. We look at scientists with awe, as if they are a special species and a sort of super humans. The fact is, scientists are ordinary human beings just like the rest of us. And just like the rest of us, scientists have egos. They are subject to pressure to produce, same as the rest of the labour force. Publishing articles fast and frequently helps a scientist’s career more than less frequent, but more valid, publications would. Like us, scientists want to be able to pay the mortgage, keep the kids at the private schools and buy a new car next year. Research funding and university jobs are scarce, and there is fierce competition for them. The older generation is ever watchful that the ideas of some young, coming colleague don’t overturn their own, old theories, the ones they’ve built their senior careers on. It’s not so hard to keep some uppity young thing from getting a teaching position. It isn’t hard to prevent a younger colleague from publishing, or at least to delay this, and if this fails, well, you can always manipulate the citation index (see text box below).
As a result of all this, science, itself, is organized in a strictly structured (and enforced) hierarchy – scientists spend their lives moving within a dominance hierarchy they are never allowed to forget, always watching out whether they are stepping on higher ranked toes. For example, at scientific congresses, an insider can see at a glance who the Alpha leaders are just by looking at the seating arrangement. The closer to the front, the higher the rank. You ask difficult questions of those sitting behind you, but not those in front of you. You interrupt those behind you to correct a mistake, but not those in front of you. If you disobey these rules, you run the risk of torpedoing your own chances of getting good teaching or research positions, of being cited enough to count, and thus of ever building a scientific career.
The citation index
The fact that both academic career and scientific prestige are so dependent on publishing has led to the churning out of much trivial, irrelevant or even spurious work. Under the publish or perish pressure, some scientists have gone so far as to falsify data. Some have even published articles about research that never really took place. In the end, the problem of low quality publications reached such proportions that publication alone was abandoned as a criterion for estimating a researcher’s worth. Privately, inside the club, some of the most brilliant scientists openly acknowledge that you have as much chance of finding quality work in the scientific journals as you do on the Internet, where any nut (be it a brilliant nut or be it just a nut) can write and publish as s/he pleases. As both university administrators and the general public began to get wind of this problem, a solution had to be found – some way to more validly estimate the quality of a researcher’s work. They came up with the citation index. This is published by organizations that keep track of how much one scientist’s published work is cited by other scientists in their footnotes and bibliographies. The presumption is that scientists will tend to use high quality work as sources for their own. This presumption was justified by the fact that Nobel Prize winners turned out, up to 1965, to indeed have been cited about 40 times as often as other colleagues (despite the fact that these Nobel Prize winners only published about five times as much).
But of course, water always seek the lowest level – and scientists are, just like the rest of us, about 60% water. Once the citation index was instituted as a basis for getting jobs and prestige, people immediately began manipulating the index. All you have to do is cite your friends and ignore your competitors whenever possible. Yet again, this has taken such a flight that no one really takes the various indexes entirely seriously anymore. Some scientists openly and publicly ridicule them, while others (guess who) avidly defend them. Everyone recommends, at any rate, not using them as the sole measure of a researcher’s scientific worth.
End text box
In a nutshell, science is partly an honest search for founded knowledge, but it is also partly a complicated ritual dance about ranks and status and damned be the truth. And of course, the young scientist must, like all young animals, survive in the environment s/he lives in. It is, thus, not so easy to contradict a Nobel Prize winner (at least not while he’s still alive). And when you live and move daily in a world that is organized by the principle of a strict dominance hierarchy and ever-guarded ranks, it’s not so easy to see when you are projecting this onto others (in particular when the others can’t speak to correct you).
Then there’s a second problem with the objectivity of science: scientists are still mostly men. We all know (and it has been proven repeatedly) that men tend to use competitive strategies in dealing with group membership, whereas women tend to use cooperative strategies. As we look at the world around us, we all refer to our own inner experience and motivation as we try to understand and explain it. It can’t be otherwise, this is true of all humans. Our own experience of the world affects which things we find important enough to study at all, which questions we then pose, which things we think are relevant (and thus which things we count), and how we interpret whatever results our studies turn up. Because of this, it’s inevitable that the pretty much exclusive presence of men in science has led to some distortions in the way the world is researched and interpreted. This might not be so important when we’re looking at non-living things, but when it comes to interpreting the behavior of living creatures this is a serious failing. This projection of purely male, competitive psychology onto reality has given us many faulty theories about the world of the living. The theory that non-human animals are constantly constructing competitive hierarchies isn’t the only one. Freud’s theory that incest doesn’t really occur, that this is just four-year-old girls having fantasies about sleeping with their fathers, came from the same place.
Then there’s this other thing about having mostly men do science. Recent research (published by The Scientific American) has shown that men engage in science in a different way than women do. Men are more preoccupied with career building and tend to be focused on publishing a lot and fast. Women tend to be more concerned with doing really thorough research, even if this slows down their rate of publication. In other words, women tend to do better science than men, but the rules of the game mean that this slows down their careers. This doesn’t mean that all men are inferior scientists. It does mean that it isn’t always the best scientists who end up at the top of the hierarchy, with the most prestige.
When we are talking about the sciences that study animal behavior, there is a third thing that gets in the way of objectivity. We now know that science often attract people who have various, more or less serious, autism related disorders, perhaps in particular Asperger’s syndrome. This turned out, in 2006, to be the explanation for a small epidemic of autistic disorders among school-going children in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. A world wide electronics company had established a large scientific research centre in that city, which – as it turned out – had attracted an unusual concentration of parents (scientists employed by the company) who themselves suffered from these heritable disorders. One of the typical symptoms of these disorders is that the bearer has difficulty with social and communicative skills. They often have difficulty conceiving of the other as a living being with its own inner world of knowledge, feelings, beliefs and intentions that are not the same as his/her own: they lack the ability to feel empathy. They tend to have difficulty with social and emotional reciprocity. People with these disorders are particularly bad at reading non-verbal language and social signals. Because of this, they often have trouble responding appropriately in social contexts or communicating their own inner world. There has not yet been any large scale investigation into exactly how many scientists have autism related disorders, nor whether they are concentrated in particular fields of study. Until these questions are answered, it is probably a good idea to be reserved about believing any statements scientists make about the behavior of animals. First we need to know how many of the observers we have appointed to this task are really capable of understanding another’s behavior at all.
But we aren’t done yet. When we are talking about animals, we are talking about non-verbal creatures, whose only means of expressing themselves is body language. Among humans, about seventy percent of the information that is conveyed in a conversation is conveyed non-verbally, by our facial expressions, tone of voice, body postures and positions. Among animals, one hundred percent of the information is conveyed this way. Now of course, not all scientists have autism related problems with this – but it remains a problem that most scientists are men. Men in general are infamously (and scientifically proven) bad at reading what we call body language, at any rate they are much worse at it than women. So it is, yet again, questionable whether we can and should put our trust in what are, evidently, our least capable observers when we want to understand the behavior of animals.
If we take all of the above together, this may explain why so many scientists still, some three hundred fifty years later, embrace Descartes’ view of the animal as a machine, a sort of program-driven automaton that is without feelings, without any kind of thoughts, completely different and separate from humans. It is, in scientific circles, still taboo to contradict this idea. The word “anthropomorphic” appears instantly as a reproach, and as proof that you must be fairly worthless and quite misguided as a scientist. [Anthropomorphism means assigning human qualities to non-human objects.] This is often still the case even when it’s about something as evident as the fact that other mammals feel pain. The accusation of anthropomorphism is usually paired with ridicule and laughter.
Because of all this, science moves only very slowly in correcting the flaws I point out in this book. We know now how similar our anatomies and brains are to those of other animals (and where they aren’t similar), including the functions of all kinds of body and brain structures, processes and parts. We know now that we differ genetically from a rabbit only by about fifteen percent – which means that a large number of our own genes are executing the same programs they execute in other animals. Despite this, scientists are still amazed when, for example, a creature as simple as a crow is able to make plans, to use tools and to complete complicated tasks (a thing any farmer could have told them three hundred years ago, had they bothered to ask, and if they hadn’t laughed so contemptuously at him). And, after watching the crow make plans, use tools, and do complicated assignments, they still continue to insist that the same crow is unable to feel (for example) pain as we feel it. In a nutshell, science now has to deny many known facts because of adopting an incorrect viewpoint three hundred fifty years ago, one which is now very difficult to abandon without great loss of face. But of course, it could be less nefarious. It could be a kind of innocence operating. It could be that scientists are just genuinely unable to adapt to changes, preferring to continue their repetitive movements according to their set pattern, because they are semi-autistic and can’t understand the meaning of it all, or why it would matter anyway. The ridiculing laughter may be nothing more than the defensive autistic panic reaction when confronted with a part of the universe they aren’t even able to perceive, let alone understand. This, too, is possible.
Another reason science moves so slowly is the obsession with measurement and quantification. You might think you see a thing, but it doesn’t really exist until you have measured it. This is something that fits into the pattern of autism, but it is also (to be fair) a kind of honest hope that measurement and quantification will (albeit magically) insure objectivity. This wouldn’t be so bad if scientists had said you don’t understand a thing until you’ve measured it. But alas, this isn’t what they came up with, and this is a source of huge problems with science. Many aspects of reality are simply denied as even existing, simply because we can’t measure them (yet). The shock at discovering how few genes we have and the conclusion that we really aren’t so different from other animals as we thought, is just one example. Another problem is that the fixation with quantification leads science to focus on things we can measure instead of concentrating on things that are really relevant. A question that can’t be answered with quantitative data and a statistics program, in an article of not more than seven pages length (including diagrams and tables), is set aside – you can’t publish about it anyway, so why be interested? Even scientists are complaining that this attitude has led to stagnation in the formation of theory in favour of measuring all kinds of irrelevant trivia. A final problem is that if you want to measure aspects of living beings, you have to create highly artificial circumstances and situations. This means your measurements no longer reflect the real world, and that your measurements are, therefore, very often irrelevant or even banal. This has sometimes led to surprising results, to the measurement of things that turned out not really to exist – things that were a temporary result of the artificial circumstances, which ceased to exist as soon as the artificial circumstances are removed. The dominance hierarchy within a wolf pack is an example of this. Our puppies fighting over a bone in the lab is another one.
Fact: Scientists have forgotten that one of the things they should be observing most (if they want to claim objectivity) is their own behavior. They have forgotten to watch out for how their own psychology is determining what they see. They have been too unaware that they are, like any other animal, projecting their own inner world onto the outer world and calling this the only true reality.
Fact: So there we are. There are huge unsolved problems in the sciences. All kinds of human interests, biases, and limitations play a bigger role than we acknowledge, despite sometimes honest attempts to correct these. We would all do well to keep a healthy dose of scepticism as we listen to what the scientists are telling us about dogs. You don’t have to (and can’t) assume you always know better, but you can – just to be sure – refrain from letting them talk you into doing anything that you suspect may be cruel.
Animals “projecting”
Most animals do not have the large areas of the brain that give us our abstract cognitive abilities. Most animals don’t seem to have an abstract sense of self and other, nor the ability to abstractly think about themselves or themselves vs. the other. Animals operate within their perception of the world, without being able to stand back and observe themselves. They can’t think, “Gee, maybe the other is living in a different world of perception.”
As a result, many animals will interpret the behavior of another animal according to their own inner world. Some examples to clarify. When dogs bare their teeth, they are telling the other that they want distance and will use their weapons for it if they have to. When chimps bare their teeth, they are telling the other that they feel afraid. Unless the animal has a long learning experience of what it means when we show our teeth, the animal will respond as if our smile means the same thing it means for the animal’s own species. When a human smiles at a dog, many dogs take this to mean the human is hostile. When we smile at a chimp, a chimp may take this to mean we are fearful. The animals react to our approach accordingly, and according to the rules that govern their behavior with their own kind.
So male human scientists are just another kind of animal. They look at an animal and think, “when I behave that way, it means I have such-and-such a motive, so the animal must have that same motive now, too.” And then they tell us to respond according to our human rules, just as any other non-cognitive animal would respond according to its own rules. The fact that scientists are so quick to accuse others of anthropomorphism illustrates how unconscious their own projections are.
Burgoon, JK, Buller, DB, Woodall, WG, Nonverbal communication: The unspoken dialogue,McGraw-Hill Companies Inc, NY, 1966.
Carson, G, Men Beasts and Gods: A History of Cruelty and Kindness to Animals, Charles Scribner,NY 1972.
Chomsky, N, Language, Politics, and Composition, an interview of Chomsky by Gary A.Olson and Lester Faigley, Journal of Advanced Composition, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1991.
Cohen, E, Law folklore and animal lore, Past and Present 110: 6–37, 1986.
Dahles, H, Game killing and killing games: An anthropologist looking at hunting in
modern society, Society & Animals, Vol.1 No. 2, 1993.
Darnton, R, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Vintage NY, 1985.
Dawkins, MS, Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare, Methuen, NY, 1981.
Dawkins, MS, Through our eyes only? The search for animal consciousness OUP, 1995.
De Boo, M, Onbereikbare toga; in het Wageningse landbouwereldje kwamen geleerdevrouwen niet aan de bak, NRC Handelsblad, 31 mei en 1 juni 2003, Wetenschap enOnderwijs, p.41.
Descartes, R, Treatise of man (1629), translated by Thomas Steel Hall, Harvard UniversityPress, Cambridge MA, 1972.
Descartes, R, Animals are machines, in Armstrong, SJ, and Botzler, RG, eds. Environmental ethics: Divergence and Convergence, McGraw-Hill, NY, pp 281–285, 1993.
Erwin, J, Deni, R, Strangers in a strange land: Abnormal behaviour or abnormalenvironments? in Erwin, J, Maple, T, Mitchell, G, (eds): Captivity and Behaviour, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, NY, 1979, pp 1–28.
Engell, J, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism, Harvard University Press,Cambridge MA, 1981.
Finkelstein, JJ, The ox that gored, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 71 pt 2,1981.
Firestone, S, De dialectiek van de sekse: Het argument voor de feministische revolutie,UitgeverijBert Bakker, Amsterdam, 1979.
Fox, MW, (ed) Abnormal Behaviour in Animals, WB Saunders & Co, Philadelphia, 1968.
Friedman, DF, ‘Does altruism produce efficient outcomes? Marshall vs.Kaldor 1987, pub2002.
Goodloe, LP, Issues in description and measurement of temperament in companion dogs,in Voith, VL, Borchelt, PL, eds Readings in Companion Animal Behaviour,Veterinary Learningsystems Co. Inc., Trenton NJ, 1996: 32–39.
Greer, G, De vrouw als eunuch, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1972. (Original title: The Female Eunuch.)
Greer, G, Het lot van de vrouw: De politiek van de menselijke vruchtbaarheid, Meulenhoff,Amsterdam, 1984. (Original title: Sex and Destiny. The Politics of Human Fertility.)
Guerrero, LK, DeVito, JA, Hecht, ML, (eds), The nonverbal communication reader: Classic and contemporary readings, Waveland, Prospect Heights IL, 1999.
Hajer, M, Vliegen door verzwavelde rook; de universiteiten moeten zelf hun maatschappelijke onderzoek bepalen, NRC Handelsblad, 16 en 17 februari 2002, Wetenschap enOnderwijs p.39.
Hart, BL, Hart, LA, Selecting pet dogs on the basis of cluster analysis of breed behavioural profiles and gender, JAVMA 186[11]: 1181–1185, 1985.
Hart, BL, Hart, LA, Selecting the best companion animal: breed and gender specific behavioural profi les, in The pet connection: Its Influence on Our Health and Quality of Life,Anerson, RK, Hart, BL, Hart, LA, (eds) University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984, pp180–193.
Hart, BL, Miller, MF, Behavioural profiles of dog breeds: A quantitative approach, JAVMA 186[11]: 1175–1180, 1985.
Herek, GM, The instrumentality of attitudes: Toward a neofunctional theory, Journal of Social Issues, 42: 99–114, 1986.
Hills, AM, The motivational bases of attitudes toward animals, Animals & Society, Volume 1 No.
2, 1993.
Holton, G, Different perceptions: Women approach research with care but their low
publication rate crimps their careers, Sc Am April 1998.
Icke, V S-baan, NRC Handelsblad, 7 rn 8 juni 2003, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p. 36.
Ivy, DK, Backlund, P, Exploring genderspeak, MeGraw-Hill Companies Inc., NY, 1994.
Katz, D, The functional approach to the study of attitudes, Public Opinion, Quarterly 24:163–204, 1960.
Koelewijn, J, De Koning, P, De inktwerking van autisme in families; spaghetti met
tomatensaus, NRC Handelsblad, 7 en 8 juni 2003, p.24.
Koenen, L, De ontmaskering van Nim Chimpsky; profiel van een gedreven wetenschapper, M: het maandblad van NRC Handelsblad, maart 2003 pp 24–32.
Kollontaj, A, De positie van de vrouw in de ontwikkeling van de maatschappij: Veertien lezingen aan de Sverdlov universiteit, Het Wereldvenster Bussum, 1982.
Kuhn, TS, The Structure of Scientifi c Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL, 1962.
Lattal, KA, A century of effect: Legacies of EL Thorndike’s Animal Intelligence, Monograph, JEAB 70: 325–336, 1998.
Lucas, C, Quantifying complexity theory
Maturana, HR, The organisation of the living: A theory of the living organisation, International Journal of Man- Machine Studies, Vol 7 1975, pp 313–332.
Maturana, HR, Biology of language: the epistemology of reality, in Miller, GA, andLenneberg, E, (eds.) Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought: Essays in Honor of EricLenneberg, Academic Press, NY, 1978, pp 27–63. < http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/maturana/BofLanguage.pdf > accessed Dec 2013.
Maturana, HR, and Varela, V, Autopoiesis and cognition: The realisation of the living, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Cohen, RS, and Wartofsky, MW, (eds.) Vol. 42 Dordrecht: D.Reidel Publishing Co., 1980.
Meijer van Putten B Verzwijgen maakt beter; fibromyalgie verdwijnt als niemand erover reptNRC Handelsblad 7 en 8 juni 2003 Onderwijs en Wetenschap p37.
Mesterton-Gibbons, M, On the evolution of pure winner and loser effects: a game-theoreticmodel, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology,61 1151–1186, (1999).
Midgley, M, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosphy Vol 54, No. 210, Oct 1979.
Mulvaney, Becky Michele, ‘Gender differences in communication: An interculturalexperience’.
Newman, G, The Punishment Response, J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1978.
Nibert, DA, Animal rights and human social issues, Society & Animals, Volume 2 No. 2, 1994.
Nicholson, J, Mannen en vrouwen: Hoe verschillend zijn ze? Het Spectrum, Amsterdam, 1984.
Phillips, MT, Savages, drunks and lab animals: The researcher’s perception of pain, Society &
Animals, Volume 1 No. 1, 1993.
Phillips, MT, Sechzer, JA, Animal Research and Ethical Conflict, Springer-Verlag, MY 1989.
Regan, R, Singer, P, (eds) Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976.
Ritvo, H, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987.
Rollin, B, Animals in experimentation: Utilitarian objects pets or moral objects, Anthrozoos 3: 88–90, 1989.
Royce, JR, A factorial study of emotionality in the dog, Psychol Monogr Gen Appl 69: 22 (Whole No. 407), 1955.
Rubin, L, Vrouwen mannen en intimiteit, Uitgeverij Maarten Mutinga, Amsterdam, 1985.
Sanders, C, Understanding Dogs: Caretakers’ attributions of mindedness in canine-human relationships, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22 2: 205–226, 1993.
Sanders, CR, Biting the hand that heals you: Encounters with problematic patients in a general veterinary practice, Society & animals, Volume 2 Number 1, 1994.
Sax B, What is a ‘Jewish dog?’ Konrad Lorenz and the cult of wildness Society & Animals, Volume 5 Number 1, 1997.
Shaw, GB, The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh, 1932.
Shapiro, D, Understanding dogs through kinesthetic empathy social construction and history Anthrozoos 3: 184–195, 1990.
Skinner, BF, The Behaviour of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc, NY, 1938.
Skinner, BF, Science and Human Behaviour, The Free Press (a division of Macmillan Publishing Co.) NY, 1953.
Skinner, BF, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Prentice-Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,1969.
Skinner, BF, About Behaviourism, Alfred A. Knopf Inc, NY, 1974.
Smit, C, Dierproeven: honderd jaar discussie, La Riviere & Voorhoeve Kampen, NL 1989.
Smith, WJ, The Behaviour of Communicating, Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA, 1977.
Sonnert, G, Advocating women: why should women be encouraged to pursue science? The arguments keep changing, Sc Am, April 1998.
Sonnert, G, Where’s the difference? Are women treated differently or are they simply different? Sc Am, April 1998.
Strumwasser, F, The relation between neuroscience and human behavioural science, JEAB 61: 307–318, 1994.
Thomas, K, Man and the natural world: A history of modern sensibility, Pantheon Books, NY, 1983.
Van Delft, D, Heel de schepping op een schoolbord, M: het maandblad van NRCHandelsblad januari 2003, pp 40–49.
Van Delft, D, ‘Wij Nederlanders hakken terug’, NRC Handelsblad, 6 en 7 augustus 2005, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p.17.
Van Hooff, JARAM, Wensing, JAB, Dominance and its behavioural measures in a captive wolf pack, in Man and Wolf, Frank, H, ed, Dr W Junk Publishers, Dordrecht, 1987 pp 219–252.
Varela, FJ, Principles of Biological Autonomy, Elsevier, (North Holland), NY, 1979.
Varela, FJ, Autonomy and autopoiesis, in Roth Gerhard and Schwegler (eds.) Self-organising Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Campus Verlag Frankfurt/NY, 1981 pp 14–23.
Varela, FJ, Thompson, E, and Rosch, E, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1991.
Visser, H, Publieke opinie als chaos; Van Ginneken over snelle meningsverschuivingen, NRC Handelsblad, 11 en 12 mei 2002, Wetenschap en Onderwijs, p 37.
Voltaire, F, A reply to Descartes, in Regan, T, Singer, P, (eds.) pp 67–68, reprint from Voltaire, F, Philosophical Dictionary ‘Animals’.
Worster, D, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1995.
Semyonova's book is available at
Hastings Press
Dogwise
amazon U.K.
U.S. amazon kindle
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)