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


 

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