Talk:Dog bite

Diane Whipple case
Diane Whipple was an example of an incident, so can this page have it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:18D:4700:2D30:D531:3909:7FA1:2D09 (talk) 12:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Victim Blaming
The article often blames human survivors for being attacked. The attitude is widespread elsewhere, and there is pressure not to show fear, and blame if we do show the natural fear or if we run away, but that's no excuse for the same attitude here. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 21:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I will look further into this. Normal Op (talk) 02:55, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

New Study
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305270428_Characteristics_of_1616_Consecutive_Dog_Bite_Injuries_at_a_Single_Institution
 * good source. Barbara (WVS) ✐   ✉  22:31, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Citation removed. Why? It was completely relevent
I don't understand why you think my citation was not relevant. Your edit summary when you reverted my addition simply said "Not a suitable source". Diff: However, Psychology Today is consider a reliable source in general and this article was written by someone who conducted a study on that exact subject ("in 1996 I conducted a study of over 6000 people" and "Such dog breeds are often labeled as vicious." etc., etc. followed by "A total of 166 owners of high risk dogs were compared with 189 owners of low risk dogs. The high risk dog owners had nearly 10 times more criminal convictions than other dog owners."). I added the citation to support the wiki text of "These breeds are more frequently owned by people involved in crime." Doc James, what do you think is "not suitable"? Nomopbs (talk) 01:32, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
 * We are looking for sources per WP:MEDRS User:Nomopbs
 * This is a popular press blog from 2009
 * The current source is better being a literature review from 2014.
 * Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * If you're all hung up on WP:MEDRS, then go straight to a citation of the study. The AVMA citation only mentioned a single sentence, though cited the study in their citation list. But the Psychology Today article cited the study AND wrote about its findings in depth. Here is the new citation. Nomopbs (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)


 * WP:MEDRS gives weight to secondary literature reviews over individual studies. The 'nutshell' box states: Ideal sources for biomedical material include literature reviews or systematic reviews in reliable, third-party, published secondary sources (such as reputable medical journals), recognised standard textbooks by experts in a field, or medical guidelines and position statements from national or international expert bodies., in this case the AVMA source would fall under "position statements from national or international expert bodies". PearlSt82 (talk) 19:27, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Illogic has no place in Wikipedia. The primary-secondary source guidelines in Wikipedia (WP:MEDRS or regular) are somewhat amorphous and require some analysis of the situation in which they are being used, so let's use some logic here. (See Primary Secondary and Tertiary Sources for concepts showing the amorphic nature of a single source document as sometimes being primary and sometimes secondary depending on how it is being used.)


 * 1) The AVMA citation is already used two other times in this very short paragraph of 50-some words. It doesn't need a third repetition. See WP:REPCITE.
 * 2) The AVMA source merely writes a single sentence on the topic: "And as owners of stigmatized breeds are more likely to have involvement in criminal and/or violent acts(46)—breed correlations may have the owner's behavior as the underlying causal factor." Does that qualify as review? (rhethorical question) No it doesn't.
 * 3) Although literally stating the concept "are more likely to have involvement in criminal and/or violent acts" it is sandwiched  between an emotionally-loaded phrase ("stigmatized breeds") and the unknown author's conclusion (which is NOT borne from the Forensics study) about why that may be so ("may have the owner's behavior as the underlying causal factor"). This shows that the AVMA reference violates secondary source guidelines. See WP:MEDDEF, where it is written: "A secondary source in medicine summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of current understanding of the topic, to make recommendations, or to combine results of several studies."
 * 4) There is no author on the AVMA's alleged 'literature review' as it is actually a self-published organization position statement . This wiki essay writes "Even WP:MEDRS has a blatant error in this regard, which some editors have been trying to fix for several years in the face of stonewalling: "Ideal sources for biomedical information include ... position statements from national or international expert bodies". Position statements are press releases (though often citing their own sources for background facts, as do high-end op-eds), and the guideline even used to say "press releases" there, but the term was removed to sweep under the rug the fact that MEDRS is saying, e.g., the British Medical Association or FDA organizational stance on e-cigarettes is "ideal" secondary sourcing when it is actually highly politicized primary material .
 * 5) Per WP:MEDDEF, the AVMA reference doesn't qualify as a 'literature review' in this sense because it IS self-published and was not found "in medical journals, specialist academic or professional books, and medical guidelines or position statements published by major health organizations". Sorry, but anonymous self-publication by a membership organization for animal health professionals just doesn't count.

On the other hand, the abstract of the actual study clearly supports the text in the Dog bite article, because it says: "Findings revealed vicious dog owners reported significantly more criminal behaviors than other dog owners. Vicious dog owners were higher in sensation seeking and primary psychopathy. Study results suggest that vicious dog ownership may be a simple marker of broader social deviance."

See Primary Secondary and Tertiary Sources where it discusses when primary sources are preferred over secondary, and where it discusses overlap of primary and secondary in a single source. And even if you still think the Forensics study is primary, the AVMA is too. Which citation is more valuable to support the sentence "These breeds are more frequently owned by people involved in crime."


 * — Nomopbs (talk) 22:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you might be misunderstanding what "self-published" means in the context of Wikipedia. Self published refers to a single individual publishing outside the framework of mainstream academic publishing, either by setting up a website/blog, or publishing through a service like Amazon Createspace. The AVMA is itself an academic publisher, as they publish the JAVMA, and serve as an accreditation body for veterinary schools, so nothing they publish would be considered "self-published". As you noted the source is a position statement, which are recognized by WP:MEDRS as a preferred source to primary sources. Keep in mind that WP:MEDRS is quite strict, especially when applied to human medicine. It might seem like a trivial issue, especially when it doesn't affect content, but its something to keep in mind when going forward. PearlSt82 (talk) 14:21, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Findings from review
There are a lot of duplicate sentences/content in this article. All of the numbers and percentages quoted ought to have a year or time period added in the content because they cover a wide range of years. Much in this article was added in a hodgepodge manner. For example, the 4.5–4.7 million statistic is quoted several times from multiple sources of several different years (some are missing years in the citation). Surely the number hasn't been static/stable for over a decade, and surely the number originates from a single source. Pick a source, pick a year, go with that, standardise it across the article. The paragraph about the Patronek study mentioned under 'Cause|Breeds' is obtuse/incomprehensible. Platonk (talk) 07:08, 10 August 2021 (UTC)