Words Matter 101: Let’s get rid of the A word

Author Janis Bradley Posted on August 19, 2021April 4, 2023Categories News

I have a personal litmus test for dog knowledge among humans.  If someone asks, “is that dog aggressive?” I understand immediately that we are starting from zero. Karen Overall, the noted behaviorist, once said that as far as she could tell, the word “aggression” simply meant anything a person didn’t like. She was speaking to an audience of dog professionals. More than 60 years ago, John Paul Scott, one of the earliest and most revered of canine behavior researchers, declared … Continue reading “Words Matter 101: Let’s get rid of the A word”

Canine public policies shouldn’t be created from media reports

Author Janis Bradley Posted on July 7, 2021April 4, 2023Categories News, Research & Publications

Dr. Gary Patronek and his colleagues, the authors of a ten-year study of dog bite-related fatalities (DBRF) did something not attempted before or since—they gathered their data from massive accumulations of reports and interviews done by officials, from investigating officers to coroners and pathologists. Previous work on the subject had always been based on collections of reports in the popular media.  One of Patronek et al’s discoveries was that the dog (or dogs) involved usually simply lived on the owner’s … Continue reading “Canine public policies shouldn’t be created from media reports”

The QAnon of Canine Behavior Science

Author Janis Bradley Posted on June 17, 2021April 4, 2023Categories News, Research & Publications

A story on NPR reports that the most popular facebook post on the brief suspension of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in April was not CNN or NYT or ABC News or Fox News. They were all in the top five, but number one was a conspiracy theorist called An0maly who describes himself as a “news analyst and hip hop artist.” This kind of reliance on wildly unreliable information sources is not limited to high profile public issues. One of the … Continue reading “The QAnon of Canine Behavior Science”