I’ve been a fan of his for a long time — I loved The Tipping Point, and saw him speak at Powell’s downtown Portland.  I knew he had his critics who challenged his conclusions or methods, but I saw that many of the attacks were ideological, and so didn’t think much of them.

But I recently stumbled onto his blog post, Pit Bulls….  It’s short; just two paragraphs long.  The first is decent; he describes how, even though a pit bull attack caused no serious physical harm,

. . . the attack could have been much more serious. If everyone hadn’t run to the defense of the boy so quickly, and if the boy’s mother hadn’t done exactly the right thing (lying down, with her body covering the boy) the boy could easily have been badly injured. The attack was horrifying, even if no one was seriously hurt . . .

But then the concluding paragraph is wrong on its face:

. . . part of the rhetorical arsenal of those who get hysterical about Pit Bulls is to pretend that every dog bite is a medical catastrophe. . . . [But] more people are admitted every year for non-dog bites than dog-bites—which is to say that when you see a Pit Bull, you should worry as much about being bitten by the person holding the leash than the dog on the other end.

[Emphasis mine]  I mean, really? He really believes (and thinks he’s proved) that people, or at least owners of pit bulls, are more likely to bite you than their dogs are?  My friend Morgan pointed out that this goes against our own experience:  We could each remember numerous times we’ve been bitten by dogs, but we’ve never been bitten by a person.

Where Gladwell goes wrong

His logic violates conditional probability.  I learned it in my core computer science curriculum.  It has the central idea:  It can be the case that if A happens, B occurs too.  Yet this does not imply the reverse: That if B happens, then A will occur.

Here, Gladwell’s premise is, when people land in the hospital due to a bite (A), it’s probably due to a non-dog animal (B).  He then draws the erroneous reverse conclusion:  When encountering a human and a dog (A), it’s more probable that the human, rather than the dog, will bite you, sending you to the hospital (B).

And another thing

I have to also say that his “those who get hysterical about Pit Bulls” characterization is B.S.  In my experience, pro-Pit Bull people (they exist) and Anti-BSL advocates often get hysterical.  See the comments to my other blog posts, for example.  However, I haven’t seen this in advocates for BSL.

This is a short story about how a pitbull died.  It belonged to someone I know very well.  I knew the dog too, and how they took care of it.  This is an anecdote about the dangers of some dog breeds.  In most cases, anecdotes aren’t very strong evidence.  But as an illustration of an idea, they can be useful:

A doorway too narrow

My friend, “Aaron” and his family owned two pitbulls, Jack and Jill, a brother and sister from the same litter.  He’d had them since they were puppies.  They were indoor dogs, living in a beautiful house and yard with plenty of toys, food, and love.  Jack and Jill were best friends: family, in the truest sense.  Jack, being a male, was a little bigger, but it was obvious that the two were on equal footing with each other.

Year after year, the dogs and their human family got along perfectly; until one day, both dogs tried to come in from the yard at the same time.  This is something that they’d done thousands of times before: Jack and Jill were out in yard, and Aaron called them into the house.  And like dogs will do, they scrambled playfully to the door to come inside.

But this time wasn’t like the thousands of times before.  Maybe they were a little too crowded in the doorway.  Maybe Jack’s arthritis had been acting up.  In honesty, we don’t know why this time was different.  This time, as they squeezed through the doorway, Jack turned and with a snap, tore Jill’s throat out.

Aftermath

This was devastating to Aaron’s family emotionally and financially.  They tried everything they could to save Jill; she had operations, and tubes implanted in her throat, but she eventually died from her injuries.

And for me personally, I’m left with a powerful anecdote about the kind of damage that pitbulls are capable of—even in the best of conditions.

Finally, I think it’s important to realize that what Jack did is typical dog behavior; you’ll see this kind of thing go on between dogs all the time if you spend enough time with them.  This outcome, though, wouldn’t have been possible with most other dog types.

Laws that restrict dog breeds which are thought to be dangerous are called Breed Specific Legislation, or “BSL”.  I haven’t made up my mind about them, but I lean in favor of thinking they’re a good thing: after all, (1) we already ban the ownership of many kinds of dangerous animals.   And (2) the cost to society and individual freedom isn’t great, e.g.:

“No, you can’t keep that coyote you saw in Powell Butte.  And if you want a pet, there are plenty of Labs waiting to be adopted at the Humane Society.”

So I conclude that if there are overly dangerous dog breeds, then it’s reasonable to restrict them in the same way.

A cute but questionable “IQ Test”

But there are many people and groups who advocate against BSL — and in favor of their being able to keep and sell these breeds.  Ok, fair enough.  And one of them, “Paul Glassner SF/SPCA”, has written a breed ban IQ test that begins,

1. If you were the sheriff in your town and you learned that Toyotas were disproportionally involved in more auto accidents than any other model, would you:
(a) ban Toyotas and confiscate the Toyota of anyone caught driving one
(b) arrest the drivers responsible for those accidents?

And that’s it — those are the only choices.  The rest of the test builds on this question and makes the points one might guess it would.  And so I found the “test” pretty shoddy—essentially propaganda.  Because what about,

(c) look at car ownership to see if a disproportionate number of people own Toyotas as well.  If not, investigate the Toyotas to see if they’re flawed by design.

…which then leads to,

(d) potentially all of the above.

Because that’s what we do in the real world:  If a car type is too dangerous by design, then we ban it.  If a model’s occupants would die from a single low-speed collision, we ban it.  Ditto if a model’s brakes are fundamentally flawed.

The car metaphor works in favor of BSL

Now that I think about it, this does apply to dangerous dogs:  The overly dangerous dog is one who’s likely to bite more often (a car that causes more accidents), and when it does bite, more often maims or kills its victim (a car that does the same to its occupants).  In other words, the “overly dangerous dog” is one that’d be responsible for higher incidence and mortality rates. If there were a car like this — and there have been — you can bet we’d take action against them.

I love NPR and Fresh Air.  But right now, I’m very disappointed.

Terri Gross is chairing a a discussion about health care solutions with two people.  One is Paul Krugman.  I knew the name, but not too much about him, and so here’s what I found:

• Professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton,
• Centenary professor at London School of Economics,
• 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize winner in economics,
• Author of “25 books and 40 scholarly articles” (Wikipedia).

I thought to myself, wow, awesome — I want to hear what he has to say.  And the other person?  “Stuart Butler, [some position at] conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation”.  Ok, so red flags go up for me.  Who is this guy?  Here’s the best I can find:

• Author of a series of “WebMemos” and “Heritage Lectures” on the Heritage Foundation website,
• Adjunct faculty at Georgetown,
• Identified as a very influential person by a D.C.-insider periodical. (per his resume)

For cryin’ out loud — why why why?  How in the world does a discussion between these two people serve listeners?  How is Butler any different from Creationists who write “research” papers that they publish in their own personal “scientific journals”?

Here’s just one of the many problems with this:

As a consumer of news and content, I’m shortchanged.

If there is a well-represented competing current of research and solutions in the field, then I’d like to hear from someone who would disagree with Krugman on some issues.  But please, this person should have similarly solid credentials, and should represent a similarly broad stream of research in the subject area. 

I’ve seen a lot of conservative commentators make arguments that the Supreme Court’s decision is somehow a repudiation of Sotomayor.  They’ve used the decision’s 90-page length as evidence of Sotomayor’s lack of good judgment, the fact of an overturned decision as evidence of it being “wrong”, and the fact that the appellants were White as evidence of her racism.

But I come to the opposite conclusions by calmly looking at the facts:

• The Court’s conservative majority reached its decision by creating law in the form of a new standard — a “strong basis in evidence” of the success of a disparate effect lawsuit is now required.Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, whose role is to interpret, not create law.
  
• The Court’s reasoning was based on a reading of the facts that was different from that of the trial court.  Several long and conflicting recitations of the facts caused the decision to reach ~90 pages.  In other words, the case was reviewed “de novo”. Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, who is required to give deference to the trial court’s findings of fact.
  
• The Court reached a 5-4 split decision along the supposed political lines: 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and Justice Kennedy in the middle. Attempting to label Sotomayor’s decision to uphold the district court’s decision as radical or racist is simply disingenuous.