Pit Bull Experts: scientifically unimpressive and technologically worthless

In 1960, Louis Leaky sent a secretary with no college education into the Africa bush to study chimpanzees. Despite the objections of "experts" Leaky persevered. Leaky felt that someone with little formal training would be more likely to describe what they were seeing rather than what they thought they should be seeing. 

I think everyone will agree that hiring Jane Goodall for the job was a brilliant move. 

Keep Jane Goodall in mind while you watch this video, The Trouble With Experts, then continue reading.

Pit bull advocates make a lot of noise about their "experts" and tout the perceived consensus among "experts" as proof that "pit bulls" are not the problem, owners are. Here are four of the more impressively credentialed "experts".

PETER L. BORCHELT


The ASPCA cited BORCHELT in their anti-BSL position statement and BORCHELT was called upon to provide his "expert" opinion in favor of pit bulls when a NYC council member sought to ban them:

A Brooklyn-based animal behaviorist who opposes a citywide pit bull ban, Peter Borchelt, said strong dogs such as pit bulls, Rottweilers and German shepherds are generally safe, if they are "raised like pets." You get into trouble when the dog is not trained to be nonaggressive," Mr. Borchelt, who has a doctorate in animal behavior, said. "They can become dangerous when they're thrown behind a fence and allowed to become overly protective. You just have to take a few extra steps to make sure the dog is friendly, affectionate, and well socialized."
PETER L. BORCHELT, PhD and "expert" for hire.

BORCHELT provided the above "expert" opinion about the safety of pit bulls AFTER he was sued for a million dollars for providing his "expert" opinion to a retired fire fighter about the safety of a pit bull that he was in possession of. The pit bull attacked the retired fire fighter. Despite the fact that the pit bull had a known documented history of previous aggression, BORCHELT assured the retired fire fighter the pit bull was safe. During the civil trial, BORCHELT testified under oath that the pit bull was not vicious. Yeah. Just in case you missed the colored text above indicating an external link, click here.

PETER BORCHELT is a member of an elite club known as Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists. According to the civil lawsuit article, he charges $300 an hour to fix your dog's problems. You can find his fee schedule here. BORCHELT'S gun for hire, er uh I mean "expert" witness page is conveniently malfunctioning.

 IAN DUNBAR

If I were asked to recommend a dog, say for a children's psychiatric ward, my first choice would be a pit bull. When children pull their tail, if they have one, or poke them, the dog's like... he doesn't care. With a good owner, you have the most fantastic breed of all.  
IAN DUNBAR, DVM, PhD

Poor Ian. Yet another dupe of proof of assertion. Apparently he has yet to receive the memo regarding the official revocation of nanny dog status. 

Hot shot Dunbar does not appear to offer services for problematic or dangerous behaviors. Smart move.

  

 RICHARD POLSKY

No other breed has been maligned or vilified as much as the pit bull terrier. One commonly finds negative publicity about this breed, despite the fact that many honorable Americans have kept pit bulls as pets, including Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. 
RICHARD POLSKY, PhD and "expert" for hire.

Poor Richard. All of that money and all those years spent studying to acquire impressive degrees was no guarantee that he would be able to demonstrate critical thinking skills. He still fell prey to the common fallacy known as Proof of Assertion. It is a documented fact that President Roosevelt's "pit bull" was a dangerous menace. It is a documented fact that Edison did not own Nipper and there is no documented proof that Thomas Edison ever owned any pit bull. 

The pit bulldog's long legacy of vilification is well earned and well documented.

POLSKY'S fee schedule is available on demand. I suspect it is one of those cases where if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it.

JAMES HA

DR JAMES HA, animal behaviorist at the University of Washington in Seattle and "expert" for hire.
The reason we're focusing just on pit bulls is that we hear so much about them, and that is not because of the breed difference, the genetic difference - that's because of the way they've been raised.

That quote is from a 2010 KOMO news interview. Compare that to HA'S blog post in 2008, where HA cited research that stated red and golden cocker spaniels were more likely to display aggressive behavior than black cocker spaniels and that yellow labs were "significantly more likely to be reported with aggression problems" than the black or chocolate variants, yet JAMES HA promotes the crazy notion that dogs artificially selected for violence only require a loving gentle family.

Also in the 2010 KOMO interview, DR HA stated that mastiffs, chows, shepherds, rottweillers and dobermans are "all more genetically aggressive than" dogs that had been artificially selected for combat for 200 years. HA goes on to add that genetics is roughly 20-30% responsible for temperament. YET, at the roughly 4:00 minute mark of his presentation on "Behavioral Genetics" DR HA stated that in studies of selected dog breeds, none were gripping breeds btw, for defence behaviors ie, guarding, attacking, biting there is a 14 - 20% heritability rate "which in genetics world is important". He immediately followed up with "there are different genetic predispositions in different breeds." Towards the end of this 2011 youtube video, HA states that 30-50% of behavior is genetics. My head was spinning just trying to keep up with all his facts.

DR JAMES HA is a member of an elite club known as Certified Applied Animal Behaviorists.
HA offers a variety of services ranging from $75 - 250 plus travel fees.


One unspoken assumption among early behavior geneticists, an assumption that was shared by most for many years, was that some psychological traits were likely to be significantly influenced by genetic factors, whereas others were likely to be primarily influenced by shared environmental influences. Most behavior geneticists assumed that social attitudes, for example, were influenced entirely by shared environmental influences, and so social attitudes remained largely unstudied until relatively recently. The evidence now shows how wrong these assumptions were. Nearly every reliably measured psychological phenotype (normal and abnormal) is significantly influenced by genetic factors. Heritabilities also differ far less from trait to trait than anyone initially imagined. Shared environmental influences are often, but not always, of less importance than genetic factors, and often decrease to near zero after adolescence. Genetic influence on psychological traits is ubiquitous, and psychological researchers must incorporate this fact into their research programs else their theories will be ‘‘scientifically unimpressive and technologically worthless,’’ to quote Meehl again.
Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits



Genetics, Not Parenting, Key to Temperament, Studies Say, Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1994

Major Personality Study Finds That Traits Are Mostly Inherited, New York Times, December 2, 1986



PETER BORCHELT, IAN DUNBAR, RICHARD POLSKY and JAMES HA believe that purpose bred dogs, artificially selected for violent combat for 200 years are not genetically predisposed to violence. BORCHELT, DUNBAR, POLSKY and HA believe it is equally wrong to think that nature plays second fiddle to nurture in dogs. Unfortunately, they have been able to convince others of their distorted beliefs too.


So much for "experts".



Dr James Ha
http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/articles/consider-the-pit-bull-february-2013

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/109770109.html

http://companionanimalsolutions.com/blogs/the-genetics-of-behavior-what-color-is-your-dog/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMyjS6m1Sq4


Jane Goodall
http://www.janegoodall.ca/goodall-bio-timeline.php

http://www.biography.com/people/jane-goodall-9542363#early-interest-in-primates

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Gi-He/Goodall-Jane.html#ixzz3Bo6e4pHc



The Nanny Dog Myth Revealed

Thomas Edison's pit bull

Famous Pit Bull Owners: The Thomas Alva Edison Edition

Famous Pit Bull Owners: The Presidential Edition

Pete Roosevelt: The Disgraced White House Bandog


Myth 99: Scientists know what they are talking about because they study animals in an objective way, Alexandra Semyonova

The science of how behavior is inherited in aggressive dogs by Alexandra Semyonova

Alexandra Semyonova's book, The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs is available in the right side bar of this blog.


The Trouble With Experts

Only An Expert


 

Antisocial Character and Behavior: Threats and Solutions - William H. Reid

NATURAL-BORN PSYCHOPATHS

The costs of chronic and widespread psychopathic behavior are not some nonjudgmental natural phenomena in which the fittest survive. North America is not "nature red in tooth and claw," in which there is no right or wrong in being predator or prey in some oddly natural order of things. We control our social destiny as no animals and no other humans in history have done. We are rational people choosing to deny our own responsibility for personal and social well-being.

I dislike anthropological comments, now pop social science, that compare psychopaths to wolves and speak of some misinterpreted Darwinian survival of the fittest. Such academic wags are engaging in what seems to be the opposite of anthropomorphism. It is tempting to say that our masses have somehow become baitfish for the psychopathic shark, or sheep for the antisocial wolf, but this is not quite the case. In modern society, human predators are not acting out of some instinct, and their prey are not genetically predestined to become part of a figurative food chain. To say that most human predators are acting animalistically, out of some natural but hypertrophied survival or territorial imperative, is to give them more credit than they are due, and to deny them the responsibility that we are entitled to demand for their actions.

I agree that we can see remnants of our phylogeny in our brains and behaviors, but it is a mistake to search there for answers to behavioral questions. Sadistic, amoral, or intraspecies violence (not related to mating contests or, in a few species, competition for food) is not often found in nature. It has little evolutionary value. Thus predatory sexual violence, for example, cannot be correctly termed "animalistic," since no "animals" engage in it. Preying upon the elderly or disabled of one's own species, a hallmark of psychopathic opportunism, has almost no parallel in mammalian nature. Human psychopathy involves human experience and human choice.

If the human predators, psychopaths and others, are not to be seen as "animals," should they be seen as "only human," part of the "human condition"? And should they be treated according to the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Should our lofty principles and sense of ethics cause us to treat them with understanding and forgiveness alone? Of course not.

OUR SENSE OF FAIRNESS IS KILLING US

One of the biggest obstacles to finding answers to chronic antisocial behavior and violent crime, and at the same time one of the least appreciated, is our sense of fairness.

Law-abiding citizens are heavily invested in the premise that all people value the tenets of our Constitution. Many go further, and believe that a very liberal interpretation of the Constitution is important to protecting our republic and its representative democracy.

Chronic criminals and psychopaths do not value the same rules and tenets, except for themselves. Instead, they use them against us. Thus they take from us in a very serious way–by turning our deep convictions (and guilts about going against those convictions) to their own ends. We hobble ourselves, but not the crooks, with our rules. In this, one of the most dangerous games, the playing field is wildly tilted in favor of the opponent.

But isn't our sense of fairness in the face of adversity a mark of our civilization? Isn't this what separates us from the animals, and even from the very criminals we seek to control? Don't we need that sense of fairness to keep out society intact?

No. First, life is full of situations in which we need to do something distasteful, try to do it within our rules of law and ethics, and somehow accomplish the goal. Most of us agree that we need to slaughter animals from time to time. We do it as humanely as possible, but we get it done. And we do it in such a way that our needs for food, safety, efficiency, and profit are met. We also agree that some public health needs are important enough to require suspension of some rights of people who have not been convicted of any crime; this suspension is sometimes based merely on the possibility that they may become ill and represent a danger to others. We require that certain people with infections be reported, treated, and in some cases prevented from infecting others (via quarantine or even incarceration).

But we shrink from controlling the criminal or probably criminal, even when the danger is far more obvious. We are so bound by the tenets of fairness and basic equality upon which we have founded systems of Western law (and some, but not all, Western religion) that we steadfastly prevent ourselves from seeing some exceptions to those tenets. We recognize that there are exceptions–for children and a few other groups–but we fail to apply them to psychopaths and other chronically predatory people until the damage has been done.

Firm Action Need Not Threaten Our Democracy or Our Ethics

We wrestle endlessly with the question of who is the greater danger: those who would openly subvert society and overthrow it, or those who we fear would weaken it by suspending our rights, one by one in the name of protecting us from some internal threat. While we have been interminably discussing this weighty issue, the psychopaths, who don't trouble themselves with contemplation, have been gaining ground. It is not just a question of finding a solution that protects us from violence while guarding against the possibility that we will throw the Constitution out with the crooks. Our philosophical struggle with the issues has become truly obsessive. We are frustrated, but complacent. Reformers disagree, obstruct each other's actions, and accomplish virtually nothing in the way of real solutions. If this were an invasion, with clouds of war gathering on the horizon, would we be so complacent?

There is no "if". To fail to act is to make our world even smaller–to give up our streets, parks, stores, and schools to predators who neither believe in nor adhere to the rules we hold dear for ourselves. To fail to act is to continue to limit our freedoms at the hands of those who laugh at our naiveté. To fail to act may be to lose our democracy.

"They" Are Different from "Us"

I have no wish to dehumanize people when I say that those who purposely endanger others in our streets, parks, and schools, even our homes, are qualitatively different from us; the enemy is at our door. Most of our energy must be diverted to immediate defense, not merely to studying his motivations. There is no (reasonable) ethic which requires that we treat him as we treat other adults; indeed, to do so is foolish. If we treat him as if he were like us, we will continue to fail, and he will continue to take from us.



Antisocial Character and Behavior: Threats and Solutions, William H. Reid
Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior, Theodore Millon PhD DSc, et al, 2003

William H Reid is a forensic psychiatrist and author of Unmasking the Psychopath: Antisocial Personality and Related Symptoms.
I recommend both books.

related post Community Protection Act

Community Protection Act

EARL KENNETH SHRINER

On May 20, 1989, a 7 year old boy was raped, stabbed, sexually mutilated and left for dead in a park in Tacoma, Washington. The next day, police arrested Earl Kenneth Shriner, a violent sex offender who was well known to the authorities for violent sex crimes dating back 24 years.

What was so unusual about this particular crime and this predator that they earned a mention on this blog? Shriner openly talked about his deranged fantasies of rape and torture. The authorities were well aware of the extreme danger Shriner posed to the community and they were frustrated that there was nothing they could do about it.

Not surprisingly, when those details were made public in the days after Shriner's arrest, there was massive public outrage. This outrage was channeled into a victim advocacy group. They called themselves The Tennis Shoe Brigade and they demanded that lawmakers pass laws making communities safer. And they got it.

In 1990, Washington State legislators unanimously passed the first sexual predator law that allowed the state to lock someone up indefinitely in an effort to protect the community from future crimes they MIGHT commit.

Over the next 25 years, nineteen states passed similar laws and of course legal challenges claiming the laws were unconstitutional were close behind. Funny, each time the laws were challenged, the courts upheld the right of the state to protect the community from violent predators.

The tragic story of the 7 year old Tacoma boy and Earl Shriner seems out of place here, yet there is a ring of eerie familiarity.

Hardly a day goes by where I do not read or hear about situations where people complain to the authorities about loose and menacing dogs but the response from law enforcement and animal control is "Sorry, we can't do anything until after the dog bites." And of course, everyone's favorite, "Sorry but we have to witness the violation."

It is hard to imagine an incident more horrific or more preventable than the brutality Earl Shriner inflicted on that 7 year old Tacoma boy in 1989. Yet an even more egregious example of the unnecessarily tragic limitations of our laws has been playing out in Dayton, Ohio since February 7, 2014. Enter the story of Klonda Richey.

For the last couple of years Klonda Richey did not feel safe on her own property. The complaints she made to her violent felon neighbor ANDREW NASON about his vicious dogs were not only ignored by NASON but also ignored by the Montgomery County Dog Warden when the violations were not witnessed by ACOs. Klonda's paper trail of well documented complaints seemed to only escalate the tension between her and NASON and his vicious killer dogs. Threats and intimidation by NASON were captured on video surveillance. The police advised Klonda to seek a protection order and the magistrate, for whatever insane or political reason, denied her request. As a result, Dayton now has a dead woman it needs to explain.

The $64,000 questions is: Why do dangerous dogs have more rights than dangerous humans?

If we as a society can lock human beings up indefinitely to prevent future crimes they might commit, why on earth can't we take similar actions against dangerous DOGS? Why are dogs afforded this ridiculously excessive burden of proof?

The murder of Klonda Richey should be a wake up call. I hope the good people of Ohio can channel their outrage into something as productive as The Tennis Shoe Brigade and just maybe, we will see the rest of the states start to fall like dominoes.


Klonda Richey - Scorched Earth

Klonda Richey - DBO

Klonda Rickey - craven desires

Klonda Richey home video surveillance

More surveillance video

The Spokesman Review May 23, 1989

Earl Kenneth Shriner wikipedia

Community Protection Act of 1990

New York Times March 3, 2007

ATSA Civil Commitment of Sexually Violent Predators

Canine Discrimination by Richard Prince

“Genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.” – Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Project and current director of the National Institutes of Health





The term was invented by the pro-pit bull lobby, for the sole purpose of using both “real discrimination” and our love for dogs to get you to feel sorry their Pit Bulls. Their purpose is designed to combat people nationwide who are screaming for legislation in regards to Pit Bulls.

Just to get you up to speed, Pit Bulls have killed at least eight Americans in the first 80 days of 2015.

The dog “species” as a whole have killed 42 Americans in 2014. Pit Bulls and their mixes have killed at least 31 of those 42. It is important to note that breed was not identified in three fatalities. Frequent human kills by dogs is a breed specific problem, and therefore “Canine Discrimination is not a bad thing. It is necessary. Pit Bulls and their mixes are responsible for 100% of all human deaths (so far) this year by canines.

There are over 400 different recognized breeds of dogs in the world. How is it, only one breed can be responsible for over 90% of all deaths caused by dogs?

Lets take a look at the word discrimination. Webster’s three definitions:

1) the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people

2) the ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not

3) the ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing

We can throw out the first one because it refers to the legal definition of discrimination, which pertains to PEOPLE. The Constitution protects people from unjust discrimination. There is no national legal wording that protects dogs or cats from unjust discrimination by breed, and there should never be! So we throw the legal definition out, which, I would like to point out is the definition that the pro-pit bull lobby wants you to think of when they sell their rotten and selfish bill of goods.

What does that leave us?

The ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not and the ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing.

Let’s now talk about the “dog” as a species. They all derived from the wolf if you go back in time far enough, but at some point, some of them became domesticated. Not for pets, but mostly for work. Mankind discovered the dogs are excellent helpers when it comes to work. Not all jobs were the same, and not all dogs had the same desires or abilities.

What did mankind do? We began to meddle with the dog species. Through discriminatory, artificial selection through controlled breeding, mankind created many different breeds of the dog species. It took hundreds of years to do. Each breed had a purpose, and they were inherently good at what they were bred for, thanks to the discriminatory breeding practices of humans.

An example of discriminatory selection for breeding---The breeders end goal in this example is to create a breed that was sleek and fast, so he would not be mating big, thick boned dogs. He would instead select longer boned dogs to breed with each other, so they would create the sleek and long boned puppies. In turn, he would grow the pups until they were old enough to breed themselves, and select and use only the ones that helped him reach his end game. He would purposely select against, discriminate against, a thick and muscled breed of dog or pup in this breeding cycle. He also would not select a dog with short and stubby legs, so that stubby dog would also be discriminated against in the selection of the the dogs that were allowed to mate with each other, when his end game was to create a racing greyhound.

The dogs became naturals at what they were discriminately bred to do. With some training, they were given the opportunity to hone their natural abilities and become even better at what they were bred to do. The breeds each developed instincts.

Puppies, almost fresh and wet from the womb have shown their instinctual abilities from a very young age, before any training had taken place. Their instincts were inherent, much like it is an instinct for a rattle snake to curl up and bite you, or the instincts of an eagle to hunt for it’s food. Young Pointer puppies will begin pointing. Young Beagle puppies will put their noses to the ground sniffing away at things as soon as they are able. It is natural for them.

The breeders did a really good job in their discrimination, in the process of their selection of dogs to mate with one another, to make all these breeds. It took hundreds of years for them to work and breed their way through the species of dog to get these final products (breeds), and now, suddenly, Pit Bull owners in 2015 wants us all to ignore these historical facts?

They toss out the words “breed discrimination” as if it were some sort of a crime? They demand we do not discriminate against pit bulls and they demand we treat them the same as we would treat any Cocker Spaniel, or Pug, or Labrador Retriever, despite the fact it was discrimination that created ALL of the different breeds.

Some breeds are really good at hunting, or pointing at birds, and some dogs were really adept at mountain rescue work. Some breeds are really good at being lap dogs, or chasing a fox, or scaring a raccoon up a tree, and lastly, some dogs were really good at fighting, gripping, and killing. Pit Bulls were hand selected to fight, in other words, man discriminated in favor of the Pit Bull's violent and savage traits.

To breed Pit Bulls, they crossed bulldogs with terriers. They used bulldogs for their strength and grip, and terriers for their tenacity, smarts and smaller size, and their hold and shake attack style.

This is what Pit Bulls were bred for. Dog fighting. All too often they use their animal aggression against humans, but now the owners of Pit Bulls want us to ignore the differences between Pit Bulls and Pugs, despite the fact that it took breeders hundreds of years to purposely create these differences.

The differences of the breeds of dogs are what makes the dog unique. Ignoring the Pit Bull's desire and ability, and instincts to grip onto another warm blooded animal, and hold and shake until there is blood and death, is about as stupid as ignoring a Greyhound's speed by putting a Pug or a Beagle on a Greyhound track to race against other Greyhounds.

Avoiding this dog may save your life.

Your life, and the lives of your children may one day depend on your ability to recognize a Pit Bull from a block away.

Creating special regulations or laws for pit bulls may save your life. Laws we simply do not need to create for every breed of the canine species. A law created to protect us from Pit Bulls, would be of no use to enforce onto Pugs and Chihuahuas.

Do all dogs bite? Yes, and Pit Bull owners are always quick to point out how nasty Dachshunds can be....but let me know when you see a Dachshunds lift a 12 year old boy off the ground and shake the child until he is dead.

Lets stop with this “breed discrimination talk”, like there is something wrong with it. It is perfectly, moral, legal and ethical to discriminate against a breed of dog.

It strikes me as awfully funny that owners of Greyhounds never complain when we recognize the speed of their dogs.

Come to think of it, the owners of hounds are pretty damn proud when we recognize how great they are at tracking.


Videos of Pointer, Setter, Border Collie and Pit Bull puppies flexing their DNA at very young ages.

A Demonstration of Genetics

http://www.fatalpitbullattacks.com/

2014 Dog Fatalities