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.