Talk:National Canine Research Council

September 2023
This article is of interest to WikiProject Media as it is a good example of the third-party technique in public relations to influence people’s perceptions and affect government policy.

This article is of interest to WikiProject Psychology as it illustrates the power of using the third party technique to attain credibility for social influence and how sustained use of public relations and propaganda techniques can change opinions. Propaganda is a subcategory of Persuasion, which in turn is a subcategory of Social Psychology.

This article is of interest to WikiProject Medicine as dog attacks, especially from pit bulls, are a major source of pediatric trauma. In addition, the National Canine Research Center’s studies imply that medical professionals are not being able to correctly identify a dog’s breed in an attack, implying their studies are not valid and can be dismissed. They further argue that breed is irrelevant to aggression and should not even be reported, e.g., the CDC has been influenced by the AVMA to no longer report breeds involved in dog attacks.

The article is of interest to WikiProject Science and WikiProject Skepticism as it illustrates how a well-funded, non-partisan advocacy group can use public relations to effectively sway public opinion away from a consensus scientific opinion and thus undercut the credibility of legitimate scientific studies performed by medical doctors and instead contribute to a politicization of science.

Veritas Aeterna (talk) 23:49, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Section headings.
Section headings aren't in line with other articles and the headings have tenuous connections to the paragraph such as "Questions about transparency", which contains no actual questions but instead just a paragraph on a dispute over a domain. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:55, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

POV issues.
This article has issues with adhering to a neutral POV, for example the infobox states the focus is 'casting doubt on opposing studies' although no examples of this have been provided.

The 'Questions about transparency' appears to contain original research based on a court case.

The claim 'Pit bull advocates claim that media reports are unreliable' is presented but without any further elaboration whilst two cited paragraphs are given to counter said argument/claim.

There also seems to be an WP:UNDUE weight given to self-published pro-breed ban positions and statements. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:06, 25 March 2024 (UTC)


 * are you certain that "casting doubt on opposing studies", the alleged purchase of NCRC by AFF that you are concerned is OR, and the "Pit bull advocates claim that media reports are unreliable" are not found in the French-language La Presse sources? I have read them before, and I think I remember seeing them there. But you must surely have recently read those sources, since you said you read them when you placed these CN tags on La Presse content in this diff  just yesterday. Geogene (talk) 04:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I checked the source for mention of Barry Pless, I didn't read the entire article as I don't speak French. I did look now and I don't see that but I'm using machine translation so something may be lost in translation.
 * >the alleged purchase of NCRC by AFF that you are concerned is OR
 * The citation for it is a court case and not the La Presse article.
 * >"Pit bull advocates claim that media reports are unreliable" are not found in the French-language La Presse sources?
 * That's not what I claim with that sentence. It's the amount of detail given to the organisations viewpoint compared to the arguments against their viewpoints.
 * If you're certain the details such as attacking opposing studies and the alleged purchase of NCRC by AFF are mentioned in the La Presse report why not add it as a source to the article? Traumnovelle (talk) 05:02, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The citation for it is a court case and not the La Presse article. It's time for you to start looking deeper into sourcing than just mass deleting and/or slapping CN tags on sentences that don't have a citation at the end. For example, I'm not sure that you understand that a source for a statement might be at the end of the paragraph. And it would be better for you to check all the sources before you slap an NPOV tag on the article. At least, I think it would save other editors' time. It's the amount of detail given to the organisations viewpoint compared to the arguments against their viewpoints. The organization does not "own" this article, or have any claim to its POV. Geogene (talk) 05:06, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * >It's time for you to start looking deeper into sourcing than just mass deleting and/or slapping CN tags on sentences that don't have a citation at the end
 * There's no citation in the section besides the court case?
 * >The organization does not "own" this article, or have any claim to its POV
 * No one owns this article but it quite clearly has been written with a POV.
 * I'm happy to have someone else look at this given it's clear you think I'm unable to fairly evaluate. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:15, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There's no citation in the section besides the court case? I'm talking about this diff where you said Pless isn't in the source. I haven't actually seen that source recently, and it will take some effort on my part to track it down, to be sure that Pless isn't in there. That's why I haven't just fixed your CN tags already, this is going to take time. But if content with difficult-to-find sources is being misrepresented with CN tags where they shouldn't be, then this is a potentially huge time sink that Wikipedia does not need. But since you said you seem to have actually had the La Presse sources in front of you yesterday, then you could checked to see if the court case was talked about, too, instead of jumping to the NPOV tag. No one owns this article but it quite clearly has been written with a POV. Everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be written with a POV. That's how WP:NPOV works. And the shortcut, WP:YESPOV. Geogene (talk) 05:33, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I checked the specific source that was cited
 * I've looked again for a third time and I don't believe the court case is cited, but once again I'm using a machine translation.
 * >Everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be written with a POV.
 * In this instance the POV does not appear to be neutral. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:39, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should checked the other La Presse articles too? You might have noticed that the content you were tagging said, Dr. Barry Pless is an authority in pediatric trauma, epidemiology and biostatistics[citation needed] hired by La Presse as an independent expert. I think a reasonable editor would have done that before slapping down the CN tag. In this instance the POV does not appear to be neutral. It is neutral, to what reliable sources have written about the NCRC. That's what "neutrality" means here. Geogene (talk) 05:47, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I just put "Barry Pless La Press" into Google and got this . Geogene (talk) 05:51, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Looking at that through Google Translate, it says this, This last conclusion is drawn from a study by the National Canine Research Council (NCRC), which belongs to a pressure group, Animal Farm Foundation, entirely dedicated to the defense of pit bulls (see other text). So there's your secondary source that says that AFF owns NCRC. So it is not Original Research. Geogene (talk) 05:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Good work. Why not add them to the article to address the issues I brought up? Traumnovelle (talk) 06:16, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * >It is neutral, to what reliable sources have written about the NCRC
 * I'm not sure the dogsbite.org and nonlineardogs website are reliable sources. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If reliable sources cite dogsbite.org, then dogsbite is reliable, per WP:USEBYOTHERS. It doesn't work in the opposite direction -- I don't think there's a way to demote a reliable source just because it cites a blogger some WP editors don't like. Geogene (talk) 06:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * So how often are the blog posts of dogsbite.org cited by reliable sources? Traumnovelle (talk) 06:17, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the reference section only, or do you have a problem with RSes that cite Dogsbite? Geogene (talk) 15:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about the opinions/blogs in the article cited to them. I'm not referring to their statistics. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:59, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Are these cites to the blogs directly, or are they cited to secondary sources that quote them? Geogene (talk) 19:02, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm referring to these two references:, . Traumnovelle (talk) 19:05, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Are those actually being used in the article? Geogene (talk) 19:06, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * References 21 and 22 respectively. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe that would be covered by WP:ABOUTSELF. Geogene (talk) 19:10, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about WP:RSOPINION/WP:DUE in regards to using the opinion pieces of two non-experts on a self-published site to detail the tobacco lobby accusation and just arguments against their position. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * La Presse apparently considers the Dogsbite people to be experts, per WP:USEBYOTHERS. Geogene (talk) 19:25, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It says sources plural, and did La Presse use the opinion piece style articles on the dogsbite website? Traumnovelle (talk) 19:30, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That feels like WP:LAWYERING. Geogene (talk) 19:33, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think being used by one reliable source (the context of which isn't explained yet) is justification for their opinion being presented in the article. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:34, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I still don't think the POV issues are adequately addressed but I'm happy to have an uninvolved third party look at this. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:46, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Changes to Improve Article
Thanks Geogene and  for your suggestions on this article. I have tightened the writing on the section about Tobacco Industry tactics and the pit bull lobby to remove the uncertainty as who the multiple critics are and as to what the parallels are that are seen between the two lobbies.

I have also increased emphasis that the more detailed parallels are as seen from the position of the victims' advocates groups and are not asserted as seen universally, just as the earlier view of BSL advocates as "racist, classist, or ablist" was the point of view of the pit bull lobby and not seen universally.

I also realize there is some redundancy between the bullet points and the table and am open to suggestions there--but would prefer we discuss them here first.

Thanks for helping improve the article. I did want to mention to that an independent admin  has formerly reviewed this article as a new page reviewer. She did not flag it for POV.

Regarding MOS, she only pointed out that some quotes were too long and I had too many. Now the quotes are fewer and more concise.

I have left the most critical in. Some are necessary to point out the degree of controversy between the two groups and the radically different points of view each side has. The quote with Dr. Golinko is necessary to point out the reporter didn't blindly accept what the doctor said and also that the dogs that attacked were most often familiar dogs and not random dogs of unknown breed or provenance.

If there are criticisms of MOS, please explain more precisely what the problems are and what constructive suggestions you would have. It would not be easy to change the layout drastically as transitions and flow from one section to another would be impacted. I looked at WP:MOS and can see that, yes, perhaps there could be a History section, if desired, but didn't anything else required.

WP:MOS suggests we avoid "edit-warring over style" and we try to "seek consensus by discussing this at the article's talk page", which I hope we can do.

I am also removing the neutrality template. If you have fair and constructive suggestions to improve balance, please add them here. Note the established science is consistent in this area over many years and is provided by peer-reviewed medical journals. NCRC is funded to find pro-pit and anti-BSL results by AFF and all the NCRC reports were dropped from the Montreal report once the undisclosed conflict of interest by NCRC was discovered by La Presse. Furthermore, Dr Joël Bergeron, président de l'Ordre des médecins vétérinaires du Québec, publicly admitted that including them was a mistake.

If you haven't seen the CBC Canadian Investigative report, "Pit Bulls Unleashed: Should They Be Banned? - The Fifth Estate" I would strongly suggest viewing that program. It is only 42:35 minutes long and provides a very good overview of this whole area. Veritas Aeterna (talk) 01:20, 29 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The MOS issues I have are with the layout and formatting of it, the sections read like essay style paragraphs (which contributes to the appearance of POV issues). Take a look at AIPAC, an article on another lobbying group for an example of what may be better.
 * I don't think that the comparison given by Muir to the tobacco lobby should be included at all due to it being undue weight given to a non-expert of a self-published source. Traumnovelle (talk) 01:32, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The text makes it clear that this is from the point of view of the victim's advocate group dogsbite.org. Veritas Aeterna (talk) 00:16, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I know it does; the issue is that I don't think their opinion should be included as they aren't a reliable source nor an expert. I'm pretty sure there is a policy page about when to include opinion pieces but I cannot find it., WP:SPS still applies however.
 * There is already the LaPresse article which presents a similar view but published in a reliable source. Traumnovelle (talk) 00:22, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not my style to leave lingering tags on pages with no clear direction on how to fix them, but the fact that I made a finite number of edits for POV doesn't mean that the last one represented a clean bill of health for the article. Just wanted that to be clear from my end. :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 02:12, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Got it! Thanks. Veritas Aeterna (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)