Talk:Fatal dog attacks in the United States/Archive 8

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The Summary Tables must be removed

The information in the actual list is already on shaky ground because of the lack of reliable secondary sources. (Please see the Talk section above "Major problem with reliability of sources for this page").

The summary tables, which are based on the sketchy information in the list, are frankly inappropriate for Wikipedia. They are are original research and not exempted based on WP:CALC

Please see WP:NOR. Here are relevant quotes from that page:

1. "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to the original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors."
2. "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources."
3. "Routine calculations do not count as original research. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age, is allowed provided there is consensus among editors that the calculation is an obvious, correct, and meaningful reflection of the sources."

So what we have in these summary table is: A synthesis of Wikipedia editors' interpretations of primary sources that barely meet the standards of WP:RS. We start out with media sources that are generally not from major newspapers. These sources are often vague or contradict each other or themselves. We then interpret these sources and enter our interpretation into the columns of the list. We then combine these interpretations into summary tables that do not reflect the uncertainty in the original sources or the uncertainty in our interpretations of those sources. This is completely appropriate for an independent blog, but it is clearly a violation of Wikipedia:Core_content_policies.Onefireuser (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser
We can and do summarize data all the time. Chrisrus (talk) 08:35, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Of course we do. That, however, does not mean it is appropriate in this instance. Again, please refer to WP:CALC:

Routine calculations do not count as original research. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age, is allowed provided there is consensus among editors that the calculation is an obvious, correct, and meaningful reflection of the sources.

In our case, the summary tables do not meet these criteria:

1. The data on which the summary tables are built is already vague and inconsistent. Summarizing it covers up this uncertainty. For example, how would we handle the Tyler Jett case or the Aiden McGrew case in the summary tables?
2. Since calculating statistics is not a basic process like adding numbers or converting units, there is no clear way of how to represent the data in an accurate way: For example, how do we determine categories of dogs? If we are not just going by breed, but are also going by type, should we combine all the retrievers together? Should we combine all "bully breeds" together? How do we handle mixed-breed dogs? In the peer-reviewed literature on dog-bite fatalities (eg the big CDC study) they specifically point out the difficulty in determining how to statistically summarize the data. They decided to summarize it in a few different ways and present them all. However, that is a research paper: original research. Playing around with statistics like that is not appropriate on Wikipedia.

So adding up the number of attacks like we do at the top of the entry for each year is allowed by WP:CALC but playing around with statistics, especially when the statistics are based on data that is itself poorly sourced, is not appropriate on Wikipedia.Onefireuser (talk) 13:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

RemovedOnefireuser (talk) 22:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

Like a lead summarizes the info in the article, these charts summarize the info in the lists. How does removing them constitute article improvement? How is the reader served by being denied them? How is the reader harmed by seeing them? The reader is served by these charts. It's easier to understand the data. Chrisrus (talk) 12:52, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no "obvious, correct, and meaningful" and meaningful way to summarize the data. For some of the data, such as age of the victims, there are "obvious, correct, and meaningful" ways to summarize. So we could keep that summary table if people want to. However, for breed, we simply don't have a straightforward way to create a summary that does not involve our own interpretation of the data. This is because many reasons. A few of which are:

• There is no clear way to handle mixed breed dogs in the tables. This is an issue that is discussed in the scholarly papers published on this subject.
• There is no clear way to decide how to group breeds, types, or "categories" of dogs. Ultimately, the decision to present the data with certain breeds grouped together or not grouped together will show the data in a different light. Deciding which way to show the data is original research. Just look at the scholarly papers that we summarize. No one would say that they are not original research.
• There is no clear way to handle conflicting or vague claims in the primary sources about breed. If one primary source says it was a Golden Retriever and another says it was a Duck Tolling Retriever, then we are engaging in original research when we decide what kind of dog we think it was.
• Our sources are inherently unreliable when it comes to identifying mixed breed dogs. Many of the dogs on this page are of mixed breed. There is extensive scholarly research showing that even experts do a poor job of identifying the make-up of mixed breed dogs. Many of our sources rely on law enforcement or the public to identify mixed breed dogs. Even the ones that rely on Animal Control are guesses at best.
• You can just look to this Wikipedia article for additional evidence of the difficulty of identifying mixed breed dogs. Look at the case of Tyler Jett. Media identified the dog several different breeds, leading Wikipedia editors to attempt to identify the breed themselves from grainy photographs. This is clearly original research.

If there were an "obvious, correct, and meaningful" way to present the data, I would be all for it, but I don't know of a way to do that. Does this make sense?Onefireuser (talk) 13:52, 29 April 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

Not at all. We have the ages and most common and second most common dog types by year, summarized from the list. What's wrong with that? Most summaries go at the end, so I'll place them there. Chrisrus (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we don't see eye-to-eye on this. I'll think about it some more and get back to you.Onefireuser (talk) 18:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

I've been gradually working to update the Summary Tables so that they reflect the data tables, however, I still feel that these summary tables (especially the category of dog table) are Original Research because there is no "obvious, correct, and meaningful" way to summarize the information about category of dog.Onefireuser (talk) 13:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

Is this done? The bot will want to archive it, but it has no "done" template. I think we've compromised by putting it at the end, where summaries normally go.

Unfortunately, I don't think we're done with this issue. Putting the tables at the end does not address the serious concerns about WP:OR that I've raised above. This is a core issue on Wikipedia and something we need to take seriously.Onefireuser (talk) 22:00, 3 June 2013 (UTC)Onefireuser

Well, obviously all Wikipedia is is just one big summary of what's written elsewhere, so summarizing things is not bad to do. The guidelines and such you mention seem to me to be talking about drawing undue conclusions in summaries. Chrisrus (talk) 05:45, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The numerous issues related to WP:NOR with this section of the article have not been resolved. Therefore, in order to keep the page in line with WP:NOR, the Summary Tables are being removed. Please propose a way to resolve the numerous issues of Original Research mentioned above. Once those issues are resolved, we will be able to replace this valuable part of the article.Onefireuser (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2014 (UTC)Onefireuser

I don't agree. Those bulleted issues are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. There is nothign WP:NOR about summarizing. Summerizing is most of what Wikipedians are supposed do. Chrisrus (talk) 19:28, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:SUMMARYISNOTOR. Summary cannot be not WP:OR because, if it were, practically all we do here on Wikipedia would be WP:OR. Chrisrus (talk) 03:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:SUMMARYISNOTOR clearly states "Editors may make straightforward mathematical calculations or logical deductions based on fully attributed data that neither change the significance of the data nor require additional assumptions beyond what is in the source." It goes on to give an example, "For example, if a published source gives the numbers of votes cast for each candidate in an election, it is not original research to include percentages alongside the numbers, so long as it is a simple calculation and the vote counts all come from the same source. Deductions of this nature should not be made if they serve to advance a position." Thus, your decision to make a summary of all DBRFs by "mastiff type" dogs clearly does count as a simple mathematical summary. Similarly, your decision to group Pit Bulls, pit bull mixes, and pit bull type dogs into one group goes beyond a simply calculation and is not allowed on Wikipedia. We have been disagreeing on this for a while. You seem confident that what you are doing is in the best interest of Wikipedia. I also feel that what I am doing is in the best interest of Wikipedia. At this point, the best thing for us to do may be to bring this up with the NOR noticeboard.Onefireuser (talk) 22:17, 31 July 2014 (UTC)Onefireuser

In addition, as the tables stand currently, the percentages add up to more than 100%. For example, in 2013 they add up to 105%.

• This section is a bit messy, so I'm just going to add a bullet here to separate out my comment. I have to say I'm very much in Onefireuser's camp here. My understanding is that the summary tables are numerical sums of the number of incidents in each of the reported-incident tables earlier in the article. If that's the case, that's very inappropriate, because the sampling methodology for those tables is effectively, "Someone found a reliable source for it and added it to Wikipedia", but the way it is now, it appears as if it is a table summarizing research on the breakdown of absolute numbers of fatal dog attacks. These are two very different things, and the second one is definitely OR. If the lists above were known to be exhaustive, or were recreated from reliable sources claiming that they are exhaustive, I think there might be an argument to be made there, but as it is now it definitely needs to go. 0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 23:18, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

In all the papers on this subject, they summarize just as we do in the 2013 case you mention, adding a footnote explaining that there are more dogs than attacks because not every attack included only one type of dog. Second, you seem to be saying that the numbers we are giving are invalid because there might be more attacks that we haven't heard of. But we do here what all the papers on the subject do, state clearly and repeatedly that there might be more. I'll have a look at adding even more of this. But even without that, the fact that there might be more such attacks than we have here doesn't make it original research. It's just summarizing the data we have, so you'll need some other grounds, such as lack of precision or some such, because there possibly being more attacks doesn't mean this is original research because summarizing the article is not original research because if it were, most article leads would be WP:OR.bChrisrus (talk) 06:30, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The summary tables are helpful to the reader because this is a long list and it's not easy for the people to get a good idea of how many of these attacks were, for example, on little kids, or how common it really is, for example, that German Shepherd fatal attacks occur, and if there are any trends. The summary tables serve the reader well by allowing researchers to look at that and Chrisrus (talk) 06:30, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

First off, the fact that you consider this wikipedia article to be similar to research papers on the subject really betrays the fact that this is original research. Those research papers get to put summary tables because they are research papers, not an encyclopedia. Second, you suggest that it helps people get a sense of the numerical breakdown of how many dog attacks there are per breed, etc. This is exactly the problem. The sampling methodology of this table is "the attack got news coverage" and "someone found the news coverage and added the attack to Wikipedia". The number of items in this particular list and in particular the number of items in the list broken down by breed is not relevant material, and it is a very unreliable method for assessing any kind of information about the number of attacks that actually take place.

The WP:CALC idea would be if you have like a table of information of a population broken down by age and you want to take a sum across the columns to get a total. It's not about counting up the number of events from totally different sources and synthesizing them into a table broken down by dog breed.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:36, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Per the overwhelming consensus over at NORB, I'm going to remove the summary tables as original research at this point.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 08:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Missing DBRFs

There are numerous DBRFs every year that are never reported in the media. Many of them are never reported anywhere. Some, however, are reported in medical case studies, but only if there is something medically novel about the case. I am going to start assembling a list of cases here that are not found in the news media, but that may not have enough info for inclusion on the main list. We can decide on a case-by-case basis what to do with them:Onefireuser (talk) 00:24, 3 August 2014 (UTC)Onefireuser

1. 2014: Case records of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Case 10-2014. A 45-year-old man with a rash (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24670171): Bitten on hands and arms while bathing his dog. Eventually died of bacteremia and purpura fulminans due to Capnocytophaga canimorsus, an unusual infection that comes from bacteria in a dog's mouth.
2. 1993: EVALUATION OF FATAL DOG BITES: THE VIEW OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER AND ANIMAL BEHAVIORIST (https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=143002): 4-year old girl attacked in back yard by 2 strange dogs.
3. 2004: Capnocytophaga canimorsus sepsis with purpura fulminans and symmetrical gangrene following a dog bite in a shelter employee. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15201655) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onefireuser (talk • contribs) 14:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
4. 1992: Death due to attack from chow dog. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1288259) Elderly woman attacked by her dog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onefireuser (talk • contribs) 00:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Let's add this/these to the article. Chrisrus (talk) 20:37, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Should the List (Section 2) be removed from this article?

Our study in Section 2 is far from a complete survey of all dog-bite related fatalities. Another study based on CDC WONDER data found that there were at least 26 deaths in 2000. Our study on this Wikipedia page identified only 5 in 2000. If we are only reporting less than 20% of cases, what is the point of this list? There does not seem to be any valid inclusion criteria except "happened to be reported by some news website." On what basis is this material appropriate for an encyclopedia? Please see WP:SENSATION and WP:BADIDEA.Onefireuser (talk) 01:09, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• I don't see why we should be repeating the research of the CDC at al.— badly. Mangoe (talk) 12:37, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
• Support removal, there is also no data for 1997 and 1998. PearlSt82 (talk) 12:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
• I don't think it matters what percentage of the reported deaths we actually cover. Even if we were doing the research perfectly, it's still us doing original research. The fact that we're not covering the topic exhaustively is a good demonstration of why WP:OR is in place.

I also think that if this isn't a violation of WP:OR, then it's necessarily a violation of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. It seems like either it's a random collection of non-notable dog attack deaths or it's a systematic survey of all dog deaths; the former is indiscrminate, the latter is original research, neither are appropriate, so I support removal.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to be certain what is being referred to by "Section 2". Do you mean Media reports of fatal dog attacks in the United States? -- Brangifer (talk) 14:39, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this a question for me? You indented as if it is, but you also changed everyone's indentation so it looked like each paragraph is a reply to the previous one rather than a reply to the top level comment. Either way, yes, we're talking about the list of incidents.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 14:52, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

My question is part of a threaded discussion, and anyone can answer. Thanks for the answer. (Right now, with the same indentation, instead of a threaded discussion, I find it visibly hard to separate comments. Mangoe's, Pearl's and your comment are again one single block ending with your sig, which could easily create confusion. No big deal though. There is no absolute rule here defining how to thread discussions. I favor visible separation through indentation. When the same indentation is used, bullets are usually used to draw attention to that fact. See any !vote at an Afd.) -- Brangifer (talk) 15:28, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I've changed it to bullet, since I agree they are best for demarcating same-level comments. I've never seen threading work the way you've mentioned it, which is contrary to WP:INDENT (you only increase indent level if you are responding to a comment, "sister" responses have the same level of indentation). It's not a big deal, though.0x0077BE [^talk/_contrib] 16:43, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Incompleteness is not an issue. Of course this is not a complete survey of all fatal dog attacks in the United States. It's not supposed to be. It doesn't claim to be. In fact, it says repeatedly that it is not. It's a dynamic list, an incomplete list. There are countless incomplete lists all over Wikipedia. Look at List of famous dogs, List of unusual deaths, or List of exoplanets. If you've got an issue with dynamic lists in general, there must be an appropriate forum for that. Chrisrus (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

You are not using the synthesis rule correctly. The point of the rule is to keep people from publishing their own ideas, not from researching things in WP:RSes and summarizing it in Wikipedia. Doing research and summarizing facts could never be a violation of anything on Wikipedia because Wikipedia would not exist without Wikipedians doing research and summarizing it. Maybe 95% of all contributions to Wikipedia consist of doing research in RSes and summarizing it, so this article cannot be rightly criticized on the grounds that Wikipedians researched it in RSes and summarized that research.

For example, I remember a clear-cut case of original research by synthesis on the article Criticisms of Noam Chomsky. Some guy tried to add his own criticism of Noam Chomsky, and it was well cited and valid. But it was his criticism of Noam Chomsky, not one that he had found in a WP:RS. So, here, if someone personally knew about a fatal dog attack in the United States which had not been published anywhere, and added that to the article, that would be original research.

When working on Wikipedia, there will be times, such as when sources disagree, that will call for Wikipedians to not just be, as Jimmy Wales calls them, "transcription monkeys". He was talking about something else (it was the age of a famous person) but he said that those who think that anything about the rules and guidelines and such mean that we should knowingly include incorrect information to the encyclopedia; that anyone who thinks that is sorely mistaken. On this article, there could be situations in which, for example, a fatal attack is attributed at first to one kind of dog and then another kind of dog, or maybe it's attributed to a basset hound, but there is obvious reason to believe that the dog was not a basset hound. It doesn't happen a lot, it but it happens. In such cases, here just as in all kinds of articles all over Wikipedia, Wikipedians have to stop being transcription machines and think and discuss and decide what the best thing to do would be in a given case and do our best to make it good as it can be given the problem. The only thing is to just be reasonable.

Original research by synthesis would be for example if we were to look at all the sources and say that the reason that a high percentage of fatal attacks involve pitbulls (cite this fact) is because they are the among the strongest dogs on the planet (cite this fact), and, of the strongest dogs, they are the most common and popular (cite this fact) and that they actually attack people less often than smaller, weaker dogs (cite this fact). That would be us cobbling our own conclusion from different citable sources. That is why its very important to have the WP:SYN rule, even though it's so widely abused rule on Wikipedia that great care should be taken when using it. Chrisrus (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Chrisrus, I'm still not sure what the point of this list is. That was my original question above. Interestingly, the examples you gave of other lists don't actually exist. List of famous dogs actually just goes to "Lists of dogs." List of exoplanets goes to "Lists of planets." And List of unusual deaths actually goes where it is supposed to go. However, the main issue here, as 0x0077BE clearly pointed out, is that our list is indiscriminate. There is nothing notable about the list as a whole and if there was, then it would be Original Research. There is also nothing notable about the individual items on the list. This makes it quite different than List of unusual deaths. On that page most of the items are notable in and of themselves and most even have their own wikipedia article. On our page, only two out of many dozens are notable in and of themselves (and barely notable at that). There may be problems with List of unusual deaths, but if they started just googling "bizarre death" and including every event like [[1]] or [[2]] they would quickly have an indiscriminate list.Onefireuser (talk) 20:45, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

List of dogs is an example of a list each item is not necessarily notable enough to have it's own article.

List of potentially habitable exoplanets is an example of another list that, like this one, reason dictates, couldn't possibly be complete, because surely there must be more that we couldn't possibly know about, and also that list, like this one, expands regularly when new ones are found. List of unusual deaths is an example that exists because it's interesting to many people. Chrisrus (talk) 17:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Editors may be interested to see some examples of how people have found this Wikipedia article useful: [3] and [4]. I'm not sure what it says about their legal skills, but it is flattering that these lawyers were able to use our research to provide statistics that they could not find in any other reputable source.Onefireuser (talk) 23:25, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

That second law firm also unfortunately cites dogsbite.org in the same paragraph as this WP article. PearlSt82 (talk) 11:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Um, yeah. This kind of passing along our (inadequate) research is why this sort of list needs to go. Mangoe (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Please start a new section if you're going to change the subject. WP:NOTFORUM. Chrisrus (talk) 17:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

How to handle Mixed Breed Dogs

Chrisrus recently changed the Category of Dog for Ellyssa Rhae Peterson to "Mixed Breed." Apparently this change was made because the news media reported that the dogs "were mutts" that "appeared to be a combination of Labrador, German shepherd and other species." I agree that we should probably call these dogs "mixed breed." There are numerous problems with calling them Lab-Shepherd mixes (not least of which is that fact that the police/reporter think that breeds are "species"). However, for now I have reverted it. Calling these 2 dogs mixed breed is inconsistent with the hundreds of other incidents in this article. Most of the dogs in our article are mixed breed dogs that have been visually identified by police, neighbors, random people on the street, owners, animal control, etc. Why would we decide to call these 2 "mixed breeds" but assign breed labels to all the others? This may come down to a WP:RS issue. The scientific evidence, some of which we document in this article, clearly states that visual ID, especially by police etc is not a reliable way to determine breed. This is doubly true for mixed breed dogs.

So should we continue assigning breed designations based on our un-reliable sources or should we demand better documentation (eg registration) and when there are no reliable sources simply write "mixed breed" as Chrisrus decided to do in the case of Ellyssa Rhae Peterson? Onefireuser (talk) 13:18, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Should we be recording breed at all? Its highly unlikely that many, if any, of the dogs involved in fatal attacks are purebred. Beyond DNA testing there is no reliable way to ascertain a dog's makeup. PearlSt82 (talk) 15:42, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I do think we should be recording breed if we can. It is definitely a major point of interest regarding dogs and injuries. However, I'm not sure how we can source it reliably. According to WP:RS, "News reporting from less-established outlets is generally considered less reliable for statements of fact." And "Whether a specific news story is reliable for a specific fact or statement in a Wikipedia article should be assessed on a case-by-case basis". It seems that our news sources may be considered reliable for dates, ages, and possibly names. For these items, there seems to be little disagreement between sources. However, you have a good point, that it may be difficult to reliably source breed information from news reports. WP:RS also states "The reporting of rumors has a limited encyclopedic value... Wikipedia is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." There seem to be a number of factors that suggest that our news sources may not meet WP:RS when it comes to breed identification. First, there are frequent inconsistencies regarding breed ID. Second, a large body of scientific evidence suggests that visual ID of mixed breed dogs is difficult or impossible. Third, most of the scientific journal articles suggest that news media may misrepresent breed. For example, the CDC paper from 2000 stated "ascribed to breeds with a reputation for aggression." It does seem like we may run the risk of violating the statement "Wikipedia is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this. At the end of the day, our most important goal is to make sure that we are working in accordance with WP:5P. Onefireuser (talk) 16:26, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

First, thanks for all the work you've been doing. I have some time coming up and will try to follow your lead with these old newspaper searches. If you'd like me to search certain areas so we can cover more ground, let me know.

Second, we give the reader a fair summary of what the sources say about what kind of dog it was. If they state a specific breed, barring some obvious reason for doubt found in those sources, we should pass that along. In many cases, however, only a more general category is found, perhaps "spaniel", "sled dog", "pit bull", or "lap dog". We do the best we can. So let's not get hung up on the term "breed". We just give as accurate a description of the category of dog it was based on what's in the sources. That is all.

Next, a fair summary of that source is not that the dog was a lab/GSD mix. If you read it, you will agree that a better summary is that the dog was a mixed breed of unknown parentage, but it looked as if it might have lab in it, and maybe GSD, as well as other things. This is what that source says, not that the dog was a lab/GSD mix. It is not as fair a summary of the source to simply call it a lab/GSD mix; it wasn't trying to say that's what it was so much as a mixed breed dog that looked like it might be a lab/GSD mix. That seems to e the best we can do so let's undo that last edit and leave it at that.

In some other cases, you may be right; donno; it depends on the case; I'd have to see it. For example, if the source had said that it was a Lab/GSD mix - that's all; well, we would say that, barring some rational reason for doubt (such as a video of a Basset hound killing the victim) in the sources. If you see any more cases like this where a source is written in such a way that it's explicitly stated or clearly implied that in the source the category was unclear or doubtful; well, we should say something like "unclear" or "doubtful" in the category box and send them to the description box for a more wordy, detailed summary. For example, if the source said "It looked kinda like a pitbull, but it was not clear, I couldn't be certain", the we might say "Unclear, see text" or some such, not simply "Pitbull" and that's that. The thing is to do a fair summary of the source(s) in a holistic way. Chrisrus (talk) 01:39, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In response to "If they state a specific breed, barring some obvious reason for doubt found in those sources, we should pass that along," are we risking violating WP:RS where it says "The reporting of rumors has a limited encyclopedic value... Wikipedia is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." Yes, we give the reader a fair summary of what the sources say, but all the evidence suggests that the sources are not reliable for identifying types of dogs. Wikipedia guidelines say we should not use news media for statements that are unreliable. This has come up repeatedly on these talk pages. Should we query the Reliable Sources noticeboard to see if third-party editors can lend an unbiased eye?

Regarding the lab/GSD issue: I don't see the difference between these news sources saying a dog is a lab/GSD mix and saying a dog is a mixed breed that looks like a mix of lab and GSD. How do you think any of these determinations are being made? In almost all of these cases it is based on the way it looks. For example, look at Ja'Marr Tiller. He was killed by 2 stray dogs that were called lab/GSD mixes. Do you really think that someone knew the exact parentage of those 2 stray dogs? Also see Elijah Rackley. He was killed by a stray chow mix. How do you think they determined that stray was chow mix? It is all based on appearance, just like in the lab/GSD case in questions. There are tons more examples like this (80% of the cases on the page). So, in summary, I agree with you. We should not be reporting that dog as a "lab/GSD mix." But we should have a consistent policy across the whole article and not make a special exception for just one case. Onefireuser (talk) 02:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In the case of Ja'Marr Tiller, that's a bit different because the source for the Alyssa Raye attack is clearly worded in such a way as to say that they don't want to give the impression that lab/gsd mix is anything but an educated guess at best. The source that calls the dogs in the Ja'Marr Miller case lab/GSD mixes doesn't express any doubt about it in so many words. However, it does say that they were strays, and so you're right, how could they know? That's reasonable doubt. If you were to call that "mixed breed - see text", and then explained in the description the reason for the doubt; i.e.: them being strays and therefore of unknown parentage, I'd see that as doing the best we can.

In the Elijah Rackley case - check it and see - it neither expresses doubt nor says they'd been strays. Coincidentally, I used to know a Chow/lab mix. Lovely dog named Kirby that belong to some good neighbors when I lived in DC. There was no doubt what Kirby was because we knew his parents. So just because that Elijah Riackley dog was called a Chow-lab mix doesn't make me think that it must have been determined by just looking at it and guessing, because some such dogs are not so called for the reason you give; sometimes there is no reasonable doubt that a chow/Lab mix is a chow/Lab mix, and the dog in the Elijah Rackley attack seems to have been just like Kirby in that way because we don't see any clear sign of reasonable doubt in the source. So in that case, I think we should just call the dog that in that upfront way that implies that the source seemed sure about it. Chrisrus (talk) 06:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there is a tiny percentage of "designer dogs" in this country. But do you really think that most of the dogs on this page are designer mixes? Most of the dogs on this page are the result of poor ownership and have bred on their own. Your Kirby is very different from these dogs. In any case, the Elijah Rackley dog is not described as a Chow/Lab mix. If it were a designer mix, as you assert, what is it mixed with? And yes, I did check the reference, which apparently you did not do. It does not say anything about it being a Chow/lab mix; it just says Chow mix. The whole article is about how stray dogs, including this one, are a problem in the county:

"The family had apparently taken the stray dog under it's wing, a Chow-mix they named Ariel. "

"NewsChannel 9 uncovers another case involving stray dogs that attacked children in McMinn County"

"the county is overrun with wild, stray animals"

No reasonable, neutral reader could say that this is reliable evidence that they new the parentage of the dog.

When you say "them being strays and therefore of unknown parentage," how does that inform the way we should handle dogs that are being identified only by visual appearance by police, animal control, etc? That implies it is done visually and not by known parentage, especially when there are conflicting breed designations. Do you really think that most of the dogs on this page are of known parentage? Onefireuser (talk) 13:01, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that research. It's different from the Ellyssa Peterson dog because the sources don't overtly express uncertainty, although it says that it had been a stray. So how could they have been so sure? I bet it had a blue tongue, like Kerby. That's just a guess, of course, but there are some mixed breeds that clearly contain one type or breed clearly prodominates and that might explain why no doubt is expressed in that source as it is with the Peterson dog. Chrisrus (talk) 04:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I think I understand your position now. Although I still don't completely agree. Yes, people like to say that because a dog has a blue tongue it must be part Chow. But that is incorrect. See http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/dogsbreed/blacktongue.htm for examples. The bottom line is, even if people think they are confident in identifying a mixed-breed dog, the scientific literature tells us that is a false confidence. So when our sources appear confident in identifying mixed-breed dogs, all it tells us is that our sources are not WP:RS when it comes to the specific question of breed. Onefireuser (talk) 13:33, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Ok, but I hesitate to give each other carte blanche to label all stray dogs "unknown-see text". After all, most people could probably identify a stray dog as a Basset Hound. It doesn't take much training or experience to learn to tell a spitz-type from a scenthound from a sighthound. In the one which I thought you were going to restore from your undo, the way it was phrased was like "donno", looked as if it might have been a lab/GSD". Based on your research into Ariel, it seems to have been phrased as if it were generally agreed by everyone involved that that was what Ariel obviously was. My fairest summary of what this this source, (as described above) "Apparent chow mix" . That way, we warn the reader that the following description is to describe its morphology, only. That's the best I can do with the evidence provided. We should check for more sources. Chrisrus (talk) 02:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Right, and if we start labeling all stray dogs "unknown-see text," then how would we handle the large number of dogs for which the owners, police, animal control, and neighbors all report different breeds? Those inconsistencies imply that the identification is based on visual appearance rather than known parentage. That would lead us down a path of having to say that we only occasionally have encyclopedia-worthy sources to document breed identification. Onefireuser (talk) 13:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Again, I wouldn't want to make any hard and fast rules without seeing the specific case. The important thing is, we should give as fair a summary of the source(s) as possible. If something seems amiss, it should be dealt with reasonably. Next, I'm not so sure there are that many such cases as you seem to be. There are some, but maybe not really all that many, so let's not overstate the problem. And also, they are not all the same. For example, if one source were to call a dog, I donno for instance a Mackenzie River husky, and another just simply called it a husky, another said sled dog, and a very furry spitz-type, in a case like that, those are not mutually exclusive or contradictory or in disagreement. All those phrases could be all true at the same time. On the other hand, if there are cases where, just to use an extreme example, one says the a dog was a greyhound, and another said it was a fox terrier. That's mutually exclusive, so something's not right. So, in such cases, we might say "Disputed - see text". The point is, go with the fairest summary, holistically. Chrisrus (talk) 23:12, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. We should go with the most accurate summary that is reliably sourced. Onefireuser (talk) 01:25, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

CDC recommendations for dog attack prevention

Why is this green chart in the lead? It belongs in the body of the article, but certainly not in the lead. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

It certainly seems reasonable to move it. Onefireuser (talk) 01:58, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent edits.

Thanks for a large amount of recent edits. It is an unpleasant and largely thankless job, so thank you. Keep up the good work: Just a few points:

1. Is this one or two attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States&diff=prev&oldid=625009351 ?
2. In 2006, can the dog rightly be said to have "attacked" Kaitlyn Hassard?
3. In 1942, the dog was chasing a car, tripped Dorothy Whipka, and she hit her head. Is this a dog attack? Chrisrus (talk) 18:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
4. In 1977, in the Jon Setzer, Jr. attack, the source seems to be saying that the Irish setter was not suspected in the attack.

Again, I know how painful researching these attacks can be and appreciate everything you have done with these recent edits. I don't know how you were able to do these Google searches but am willing to help but when I search Google News for these events I get no results, see here: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22Fern+Atchley%22+dog+attack&safe=off&tbm=nws Chrisrus (talk) 20:27, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

1. It seems to be 1 attack, and I was following the convention set by the 1967 Goodman Brothers incident.
2. I wouldn't say this is definitely an attack, but I also wouldn't call many of the other events on the list a definite "attack." For example, Darla Anne Harper and Salvador Cotto. We've had a difficult time coming to a consensus on how to define an "attack" on this page in the past. So for now, I'll continue to interpret it broadly. If we want to define attack as always involving biting and always involving intent to harm, we should start a new section and we will need to revisit most of the entries on this page to make sure they meed that definition.
3. See above.
4. The source says they cut open the dog's stomach to see if it contained human remains. That suggests that they did suspect that the dog was invovled in the attack, but they determined that he did not actually ingest any of the victim. Onefireuser (talk) 20:14, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

1. Ok, so I consolidated the Goodman Brothers attack now.
2. Dogs do attack their toys. Attacking things can be a fun game for dogs, as opposed to an aggressive attack. But a toddler is not a toy. A play attack is still an attack if the child is being used as a chew toy or "tug" toy. But the girl and dog were playing with the scarf and it somehow got around her neck and he ran away, ran AWAY from her, dragging her accidently and strangled her. It wasn't even a play attack, it wasn't an attack at all. If they'd been running and she tripped on it and died that isn't an attack. It's not even a play attack. We only collect attacks here.
3. This dog was not attacking her even in a playful way that got out of hand. It was chasing a car and ran through her legs and she tripped and hit her head and died from tripping and falling. If I trip on Casey in the middle of the night, because he sleeps on the top of the stairs sometimes, and I'm not careful, I might trip on him and tumble down the stairs and break my neck and die, is that a fatal dog attack. There's no reason to think that dog even noticed her. Now, if I'm two years old and a great dane thinks I'm his chew toy and bites me and shakes me like a terrier shakes a rat or rag, and I die of that, well, that's a fatal dog attack, because it was only a play attack, but an attack nevertheless because the dog bit me and shook me.
4. The way it reads, they felt they cleared the setter from any suspicion. The source and our wording in the description imply that at first they thought maybe the setter was involved but decided it wasn't. There's no sign anyone believed that the setter was involved after they checked the stomach. It seems everyone, even the author of our description of the attack on this list, was trying to say that the setter was involved. So if it's now agreed the setter wasn't involved, then it shouldn't be on the list at all. Chrisrus (talk) 07:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you; the Dorothy Whipka case does not sound like an "attack." It should be removed. This is supposed to be a list of "fatal dog attacks." This whole discussion makes me think that we need to come up with a clear definition of "attack" and put it out there at the front of the page. I will start a new section below so we can discuss this. Onefireuser (talk) 14:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Whether to include the Rita Pepe attack on this list.

First, let's collect available sources on this topic. Please contribute to this list, as it may not be complete. Then, separately, let's have the discussion in subsection:

Sources on the Rita Pepe dog attack

• http://wtnh.com/2014/04/14/93-yr-old-woman-mauled-pit-bull-branford/
• http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20140603/son-says-trauma-of-april-pit-bull-attack-in-branford-played-role-in-death-of-elderly-woman

Discussion

The Rita Pepe Dog Attack should be included on the list because sources that she died of dog attack complications. Chrisrus (talk) 15:18, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Oppose - the first link does not mention her death and the second states she died a month and a half later in her own home from kidney failure. I don't think the sentence "that doctors told him the trauma and extended inactivity as a result of the attack accelerated her condition" makes the attack itself a fatality, especially if she had a preexisting condition. PearlSt82 (talk) 17:23, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The doctor said she died of trauma and extended inactivity as a result of the attack. It only says "probably" kidneys. The doctor said she died as a result of trauma and extended inactivity as a result of the attack. This means that the attack caused trauma and three weeks in the hospital, which caused her death. Please respond. This is death by complications resulting from the dog attack. Chrisrus (talk) 20:55, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

No, the doctor said the trauma and extended inactivity "accelerated her condition", referring to her kidneys. PearlSt82 (talk) 13:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Support and Comment - I am not all that familiar with this article page. I only just stumbled upon it by chance. In any event, why is the inclusion/exclusion of the Rita Pepe case controversial? You can just include it on the list and cite all of the relevant facts in the "Circumstances" column of her entry in the chart. It's all semantics as to whether her death "was" or "was not" caused by a dog. Certainly, there is at least some connection – regardless of how big or how small – between the dog attack and the death. So, just list the facts and readers can come to whatever conclusions they like. It's not as if including her death on a "list of fatal dog attacks in the USA" would be totally uncalled for, unreasonable, and unwarranted. Even if it's a "gray area" and a "close call", that's exactly what the "Circumstances" notations are for. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:27, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

@USER:Joseph A. Spadaro Please do. Let me know if you need any help. Chrisrus (talk) 05:27, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

@USER:Joseph A. Spadaro The reason she had not been included is because wikipedia is an encyclopedia and according to WP:RS "is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." Since, as the title says, this is a page about "fatal dog attacks," we should only include incidents for which we have WP:RS indicating that they were indeed fatal dog attacks. I've been trying to find a WP:RS that confirms that for the Rita Pepe case, but have not been able to. So far, all I have found is statements from her son saying that she died of kidney failure (extremely common in 90+ year olds) and that her condition was accelerated by the inactivity secondary to her attack. Again, according to WP:RS this "is not the place for passing along gossip and rumors." Please help us find a WP:RS for this incident. Onefireuser (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

According to this one, the doctor said that, even though the immediate cause of death was "probably" kidneys, she died due to trauma from the dog attack and its treatment. I.e.: complications from dog attack. Chrisrus (talk) 14:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

So, is that source considered "good enough"? I would think so. But, as I mentioned, I am not a regular reader or editor on this particular page. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:50, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

You may be mixing up what is said by the doctor and what is said by the woman's son. No doctor appears to have been interviewed for this article. Also, nowhere does it say that the dog bite was a contributing cause of death. It says she probably died of kidney failure (something that has nothing to do with dog bites) and that the trauma accelerated her condition. Here is the actual quote: "Charlie Pepe said his mother... 'probably' died of kidney failure but added that doctors told him the trauma and extended inactivity as a result of the attack accelerated her condition." Onefireuser (talk) 22:07, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I just don't see what the "big deal" and the "controversy" is. The case is – at a minimum – tangentially related to a fatal dog attack. The "gray area" can be satisfactorily explained in the "Circumstances" notations. This has nothing to do with gossip and rumors. Wikipedia is not to be taken so literally. The title of this article means "fatal dog attacks" and other tangentially related events to that main topic. There is no rule – or reason – that Wikipedia needs to be taken 100% literally, especially when the result is to exclude relevant information. Just as an example, a Wikipedia list of the "verified 100 oldest people in the world" could (and probably does) have a section for "unverified claims" (which is clearly the exact opposite of the article's title, yet nonetheless related and relevant and, thus, information that merits inclusion). Same goes here with the Pepe dog attack case (I believe). Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:02, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Should we start an "unverified claims" section? Onefireuser (talk) 01:57, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think there needs to be a new section called "unverified claims". I think the Pepe case should be listed just like any other case, and the "Circumstances" notations can be used to clarify the situation (as to whether or not it was "really" a fatal dog attack, or as to how the dog attack was or was not related to the death, etc.). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Selection Criteria: definition of "attack"

According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style at WP:LSC, lists such as this one need clear selection criteria:

Selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of unusual things or terrorist incidents), membership criteria should be based on reliable sources."

We have already defined what counts as "fatal" when we wrote that "contributing factors" count: "Not all attacks listed here were determined by medical authorities to be the primary cause of death.
However, we still need to clearly define "attack" in the context of the page. The dictionary definition is "to act against someone/something aggressively in an attempt to injure or kill." Unfortunately, we cannot use that definition because several of our cases have been described as involving playful dogs that killed their young human playmates accidentally. At WP:LSC it states that in cases where criteria are subjective, membership "should be based on reliable sources." Although it seems that our criteria will likely need to be subjective, we unfortunately cannot base membership on reliable sources, because no reliable secondary sources exist to give a list of recent fatal attacks. How do people propose we deal with this? Onefireuser (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

All attacks, whether aggressive or playful, should be included. That definition can't work because it speaks of "intent". While obviously dogs can attack, it's far from clear that they have "intent". They are just animals and it's far from clear that they can envision a future or have purposes in the way that "intend" implies. They do have emotional states, obviously, and something that we might call "agressive" or "playful". What matters is not their mental state but the simple fact of the attack. Chrisrus (talk) 15:58, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Yet, the question remains, how do we define attack? Does it need to involve a bite? A scratch? What if the dog is reported by all sources to have been playfully nipping the child and bit too hard by accident because it did not have adequate training with bite control? What if the dog was being attacked by a human and bit in self-defense? What if someone is feeding a dog and gets a small puncture wound on the hand and subsequently dies of infection? These are not hypothetical examples; they have all occurred and have been documented in our research. Perhaps this is why the scholarly sources tend to refer not to attacks but to DBRFs. Although the vast majority of the time it is obvious which fatalities are attacks, there have been enough ambiguous cases that we can't simply continue to use the Potter Stewart approach to defining attack. We need to bring this article in line with WP:LSC and preempt future disagreements about which cases belong on the list. Onefireuser (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

We should hesitate to set any strict rules as to what constitutes an "attack". We just should look at the details of the specific case. We can't predict the future nor what we will find in the past. There may be fatal dog attacks that involve neither of those things you mention, a bite or a clawing. One hears of canid attacks that amount to no more than a full-speed tripping or body-checking. So I can't really answer about those things until we see the details, because such things as knocking into another while running also are sometimes obviously not "attacks. As with every other referent on Wikipedia, (except some proper nouns), there is a gray area surrounding the central referent which includes some cases that both are and, at the very same time, are not that thing, depending on how you look at it. Hopefully, we won't have too many such cases, but if and when we do, I suspect that the solution might involve asterisks and caveats to "see text" and so on. And, as usual, discussion and editorial judgement.

Next, with regard such playful "accidents", even if it were as clear as in your example that it was merely a matter of bite control failure during play, yes, it should be included, if the person died as a result of the bite. Dogs don't always have to be in attack mode, mentally, to attack. Sometimes they attack when their brain is in play mode. Cats, for example, seem to pretty much always attack their toys as if they were prey. A play attack in which the dog and person are playing and it just gets way too rough and the person ends up dead, yes, the way I personally see that, it should be included in this list. However, It should be done in such a way so that the reader comes away with a clear understanding of what time of attack it was; that the animal, by all accounts, was not in attack mode but play mode when it play-attacked a human being to death.

Normally, on Wikipedia, when a person attacks an animal, and the animal attacks back, we consider it an animal attack on a person. Like if a person were spear fishing and hit a hammerhead and it turned around with the spear in it and killed the guy, we normally but that on the list. This happens a lot at Coyote attacks on humans; a coyote will attack someone's dog, and the human, defending the dog, attacks the coyote, and then the coyote bites the person, that goes on the list. It's just a series of attacks and counter-attacks. So we'd have to explain why we shouldn't do the same here if it ever happens that a person attacks a dog and the dog kills him in self-defence.

If a person were feeding a dog and the dog bites him and the bite kills him, that's an attack. If you're playing with a hand-puppet and the dog thinks elmo is real and attacks it and bites your hand through the puppet and you die, that's a fatal dog attack, too. And maybe an important lesson for our readers, who knows, it could be a very good thing for an individual reader to learn that such a thing can happen. Maybe they'd be more careful about that and someone might not get hurt or worse.

If a dog attacks a person and leaves a very small wound and the person shrugs off the would and doesn't get proper treatment and dies of a disease contracted by the dog bite, like Ada Clare, then we include it on the list. And as I recall, there was not too long ago a coonhound that, just out of nowhere, who knows why, bit its master just one short bite and release. He wasn't badly hurt so he didn't go to the doctor until he noticed it was more than just a little infected, but by then it was already too late. He'd gotten blood poisoning or septicemia or some such and died. A story well worth remembering for our readers! Just goes to show you, even a small animal bite can kill you if you don't get treated promptly. Wasn't a professor in Oxford who died that way after being attacked by a cat? Go to the doctor and get it treated promptly and either determine the animal wasn't rabid or start precautionary treatments. Rabies is maybe the worst way you can die.

So how do you suggest we bring the article in line with WP:LSC to have selection criteria that are "unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources"? One way would be to change the title of the article to "Dog Bite Related Fatalities in the US." Onefireuser (talk) 13:45, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

That may have been the best editorial judgement for those editors in the context of that publication at that time, but from that fact it does not necessarily follow that we must do the same thing here given this quite different context. Wikipedia normally names such articles "() attack": Shark attack, Dingo attack, Tiger attack, and so on. Deviating from such precedent would change the usual nature and scope of such articles and could have widespread ramifications. It should therefore not be done without a good explanation of why an exception should be made in this case, or perhaps whether the rest of such articles shouldn't also follow suit, given the improved Wikipedia:PRECISION grounds being put forward as an override to WP:COMMONNAME that as apparently suggested by you above.

Taken as so argued, I'd reply with an appeal to reader welfare. On this page, we discuss article improvement, but improvement in the interest of who? The reader, of course. So, if it's true that people do die from not getting small bites treated or catching disease from dog bites, couldn't that conceivably be important information for the readers? I would appreciate being told that if it were true. This is why I have started a new sub-section, below, and the point I make there about Ada Clare. My point here is to ask how the reader will benefit from moving this to Dog bite related fatalities in the United States and the resulting effect on the nature of this article by narrowing the scope so as to restrict this article to only exsanguination and such, which might predictably skew the data towards those fatalities inflicted by animals much larger and more powerful than the one that killed Ida Claire. Let the editors of that article choose perhaps quite rightly to limit their scope as may be best in that context, and let us do the same for this one.

This is very much like the CDC's decision to exclude prisoners killed by police dogs and such from their data. There is no reason we should follow suit! A dog bite fatality in the USA is a dog bite fatality in the USA - period. So if we can cite a death by police dog attack, we should include it; the fact that the government chooses to ignore deaths by government dogs in government studies doesn't mean we should or have to as well. Chrisrus (talk) 01:21, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood me. By changing the title from Attacks to DBRFs, I would not expect to narrow the article but to broaden it, and simultaneously bring it in line with WP:LSC. Currently, if we are calling it "attacks", we should only be including attacks. But many people die of bites that are not attacks. We do not have good reliable sources in all cases to say which bites are really attacks and which are simply bites that for unfortunate reasons proved fatal. However, I am not saying that we need to change the title. All I am saying is that we need to bring the article in line with WP:LSC and one way to do that would be to change the title. I am sure there are other ways to do it as well. We need to define our selection criteria. They cannot be so subjective. Onefireuser (talk) 21:39, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Did Rabid Dogs Kill Many Americans??

If I may digress, speaking of Ada Clare, we only know about her rabid dog bite death because she was a so famous. Surely, she couldn't have been the only one. There must be some record somewhere of how many people have died from rabies as a result of dog bite in this country. I know it doesn't happen anymore, because pretty much all American dogs' have rabies vaccine tags, so they all jingle when they move. So there probably hasn't been a rabies death caused by a dog bite in the USA in a very long time. But there was a time when that wasn't so! Or so I thought, but once I tried to Google scholar up some sources about how many Americans died the same way Ada Clare did, but after a while I gave up because I couldn't find anything. I invite any reader to try your luck and research skills, because such events are definitely fatal dog attacks in the USA and should be included in this article. Chrisrus (talk) 04:19, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

This is a topic I am quite familiar with through my work. As recently as the beginning of the 20th century, this country was seeing over 100 human rabies deaths per year. More than 90% of these were from dog bites. The number of deaths dropped rapidly during the 20th century and we haven't had a known human case from dog bite in at least a couple decades. However, as late as 1956, there were still tons of human deaths. For example, in that year, Texas alone had 4 human deaths from rabid dog bites. During 1980-1996, there were 2 people who died of rabies strains carried by US domestic dogs, but neither of them had a known bite from a rabid dog. During 1960-1979 there were 7 human fatalities from rabid dog exposures received in the US. These included some with known small bites and other with only saliva exposure. Some of the saliva exposure cases were clearly non-attacks: for example being licked by a friendly puppy. However, one patient had "a nonbite exposure to an aggressive stray dog." The incidence of rabies in domestic dogs in the US dropped dramatically during the 1950s, with over 8,000 cases in 1946 and only 412 in 1965. During 1946-1965 there were 236 confirmed human rabies deaths in the US, mostly occuring during the 1940s. Dogs in the United States were responsible for 119 of these deaths. Prior to the 1940s, there were dozens of human deaths due to rabid dogs per year. Some of these were reported in the news media, but there is no reason to think that collecting news reports would give an accurate picture of the true epidemiology of human deaths from rabid dogs. Some examples of the news reports are: 193219341906-19111923191918911943

There are obviously dozens more reports like this, but I do not see the value in including them in this page. All the scholarly works (in other words, all the WP:RS) on DBRFs have excluded deaths due to infection and it would be wise for us to do the same. Deaths due to infection are very different from deaths due to exsanguination or direct nervous system trauma. Onefireuser (talk) 14:55, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this, it's very interesting and would make a fine contribution to the article. Please reconsider your position and go ahead and add this information about Fatal Dog Attacks in the USA of the Ada Claire type. Why should they be excluded? Yes, they are different from other fatal dog attacks in the USA, but they are still fatal dog attacks in the USA. Chrisrus (talk) 01:21, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Additional Studies

There are two additional studies that go unmentioned, that are worth inclusion. The first is from the Puppycide Database Project, here: https://puppycidedb.com/analysis.html#dog-bite-death-rates

The second is from the National Canine Research Council, here: http://www.nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/dogbites/reported-bites-decreasing/

The two studies use death certificates; national vital statistics report, WISQARS, and a few other primary sources. Jay Dubya (talk) 21:10, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Alemeaner Dial

Please add this attack: http://www.fayobserver.com/news/crime_courts/year-old-rowland-woman-attacked-by-pit-bulls-dies/article_affb497a-8732-5154-a4aa-1bfbefc7b693.html Chrisrus (talk) 03:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC):

Good find! --Onefireuser (talk) 17:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria

According to WP:LSC, we need to define precise criteria for inclusion in a list such as this. In our research for this list, we are collecting primary news reports of dog incidents and we need to decide how to classify them. Specifically, we need to decide what counts as an "attack" and what counts as "fatal." Most of the time, these terms are unambiguous. However, we have numerous ambiguous cases. For example, there are cases where a friendly dog accidentally knocks a person over and the person dies of head trauma. That is clearly "fatal" but should we include it as an "attack"? On the other hand, there are incidents where a dog bites a nonagenarian numerous times all over the body; the nonagenarian survives but then dies months later of age-related illnesses that predated the dog bites. That case is clearly an "attack" but was it "fatal"? --Onefireuser (talk) 18:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Pamela Marie Devitt

1. http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/05/10/officials-to-conduct-dna-testing-on-pit-bulls-suspected-in-deadly-littlerock-attack/
2. http://www.am870theanswer.com/local-news/2013/05/10/pamela-marie-devitt-dead-after-pit-bull-mauling-while-jogging-in-littlerock
3. http://www.businessinsider.com/california-jogger-killed-by-pit-bulls-2013-5
4. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=9098014
5. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/calif-jogger-killed-pit-bulls-identified-19154734#.UZhkrLXVCSo
6. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/10/jogger-killed-dogs/2149843/

Ok, we've got local reports from CBS, AM870, something called "The Business Insider", Two ABCs, USA Today...; What else? Chrisrus (talk) 05:56, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The Bull Terrier

The term Bull Terrier refers to the English Bull Terrier, according to that article and presumably it's references, is a breed that was created by crossing pit bulls with a substantial genetic material from dolichocephalic dogs including collies and sighthounds. It is an animal that is part pit bull and part sighthound and such. It is no more a pit bull than a wolfdog is a wolf.

It's possible that in the Texas study the term "bull terrier" might have referred to something else, maybe pit bulls, but this is pure speculation. It might be best to present it as if, when the authors of the U Texas study said "bull terrier", they meant exactly that: they'd looked into it and were satisfied that those dogs were bull terriers, and that there were no fatal pit bull attacks in the USA during that period, except a proportion of pit bull in those few bull terriers. Chrisrus (talk) 21:00, 21 May 2013 (UTC)