Post by RealPitBull on Oct 10, 2008 8:32:23 GMT -5
This is the sort of article we should pay attention to in our fight against BSL and hate-mongering. The ideas presented here also apply to life in general and our ability to be easily manipulated by someone else's agenda. Long but WELL WORTH the read.
Thanks Michele!!!!
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The New Hate Group
Arming Ourselves against Online Propaganda and Hate Groups
By Jacquelline Marshall
Before we get far with reading certain websites, we all catch on, whether consciously or not, to the sites' biases. For example, while there is obviously a certain amount of truth to the title of the site DogsBite.org, we can see that it also has some inherent problems. First, due to lack of quantification, the words state that ALL dogs bite ALL the time. Correctly, it should read "SomeDogsBiteSometimes." That'd be a little more fair. Second, it implies that ONLY dogs bite. On the contrary...I've been bitten by human children. So perhaps a good title for a site would be SomeDogsBiteSometimesJustLikeAllOtherOrganismsWithTeethDo.org. That'd be even more fair, and pretty darned unarguable. What's more, it wouldn't waste time with deliberately inflammatory or misleading use of emotion and bias when it could actually be preventing dog bites.
But DogsBite.org is a place where desperate people gather to hate. The editors there would have us believe that stopping dog attacks is their life-work's motive, but in fact that does not explain why the site's approach is so vitriolic and its method propagandistic. In fact, the editors could well have invested their considerable energy in seeking a more useful approach to the problem of irresponsible dog owners and the damage their animals cause. Whether or not one believes that two dog breeds are ready, willing, and able to destroy families everywhere, as DogsBite.org asserts on its homepage, one must wonder if there might be a more effective means to the end of public safety than fear-mongering and hysteria.
So because of DogsBite.org's name, before we even get into the site to examine its premises, we should be aware that we are headed into a Land of Weak Logic. In the end we will have to ignore all emotion, our own and DogsBite.org's, and look for some real content. We will have to ascertain whether such sites have any foundation if we are to attempt to solve the real problem and keep people safe from very real harm. Otherwise, we run the same risk that law enforcement faces daily: We want to lay blame, but if we aren't careful we accuse the wrong individual and the real criminal is free to wreak havoc until someone carefully analyzes the evidence and ignores the fireworks. In other words, we will have to put on our Critical Thinking Hats.
According to Sonoma State University's website,
"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.... It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference" (http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.cfm).
What all this means is that critical thinking is hard. It means burrowing beneath all the wildly convincing assertions in propagandistic writing, which are convincing because they are so passionate.
In Propaganda and Persuasion, Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell write that
"Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist....[It] is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda."
In other words, propaganda is irresponsible, manipulative, and dangerous. It causes people to forget to use their brains and to succumb instead to emotionalism, which solves nothing in the political or even ethical arena. Therefore, as was previously noted, in order to most effectively deal with controversial subjects, we must learn to actively and skillfully analyze data to help us resist falling prey to propaganda and clear the way for the best solutions to whatever problems we face. In this case, we must find the solution to dog bites, and we must not be fooled by foggy thinking or cheap tactics if we are ever to eliminate these injuries. Nothing that obscures the facts is actually useful. DogsBite.org employs several techniques common to propagandists and hate groups.
"A hate group is an organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi party." (http://www.umes.edu/police/CrimeDefs.html)
That definition is from a law enforcement perspective, so obviously its focus is on human recipients of hatred; however, it's not a far stretch to include dogs by making a couple minor changes that do not in fact change the intent of the definition: A hate group is an organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against any idea which differs from that of the members of the organization. That's still the same thing; it's just a definition of a hate group the object of whose animosity is not necessarily human. Obviously with dog breeds, religion, sexual orientation, etc., are not relevant (although race may be), but the definition clearly applies to the attitude certain dog groups have for other dog groups. Or certain bird groups for other bird groups, or certain antique radio groups for others—it's all the same principle when passions are high and people resort to mental force. Hate groups do not open meaningful dialogues; their intent is merely to pummel their opposition--and the weapons in their arsenals are numerous and confusing. Any manipulative organization would do to demonstrate this principle. We are focusing on DogsBite.org as an example of how persons with certain agendas do damage by letting their emotions get the better of them in their attempt to control the ideas of others.
Common Techniques
The advertising industry knows how to control the first on our list of propagandist techniques: word play. For example, consider the packaging that claims that a product "helps reduce wrinkles up to 40%." First, the word helps means that the user must do some other things as well to reduce those unsightly wrinkles, if the product only helps. Second, it helps reduce wrinkles, not eliminate them. Third, it helps reduce up to 40%, but note that 0% is also "up to 40%." So the claim in fact goes like this: "This product, in conjunction with other approaches, assists in the reduction but not elimination of wrinkles, but in fact the other approaches may be doing the work we are helping with, if it happens at all." Advertisers have been employing psychologists for decades to help them sell products; this is not conjecture nor paranoia but a well-known technique (known as weasel words) for suggesting but not committing to claims about the product. Similarly, DogsBite.org uses word games. For example, a blog entitled "India's Outrageous Dog Bite Problem" includes the following:
"It appears this India town (population of 3.5 million), and likely many other India towns, is swarming with loose, unsterilized dogs. It also appears officials have been neglectful in dealing with the problem. Hopefully pit bulls and other fighting breeds have not been imported into the country."
This sounds simple enough, but it has several problems. First, what does "appears" mean in this context? That the town is not swarming with loose, unsterilized dogs, but looks like it is? In reality it means that the writer does not know and does not have data supporting that assertion.
Second, what does "likely many other India towns" mean? Does the writer not know? And why use the word "town" for a huge city of 3.5 million? In critical thinking, this is known as the "plain folks" appeal. It is likely to produce a defensive/protective reaction, as Americans are fond of little towns and would hate to see them devastated by raging dog packs. Third, "swarming" is a word intended to instill fear, as in the normal reaction to a swarm of bees or a science fiction alien invasion; however, the word doesn't really have any concrete meaning in this context. How many dogs per city block is that? Data would be much more useful in assessing India's situation than scary words.
Fourth, the concept of" loose, sterilized dogs" is unclear. Do India's street dogs actually belong to anyone? According to animalsheltering.org, they do not.. Nevertheless, the organization Help in Suffering has sterilized 27,000 street dogs in India, resulting in a reduction in dog population by 28%. Therefore, even the generalization that the dogs are unsterilized is not entirely accurate. And HIS claims that those dogs are "not really pets, not really feral," which might explain why they bite.
Fifth, why does "it seem" that the officials have been neglectful? This may perhaps be because the officials have also been unable to control and provide for swarms of unsupervised and starving street children, either, for whom dog bites are the least of their worries. Perhaps focusing on the controlling and providing for children in India worries these "neglectful officials" more.
Finally, the last sentence is merely an attempt to chill a reader's blood, and is meaningless in any productive discussion. Interestingly, it may also be counter-productive to the "editors'" own agenda, because it indicates that dogs other than pit bulls are doing the biting—which is a direct contradiction to their assertion that pit bulls and rottweilers are responsible for 70% of dog bites simply because of their bloodlines. Who is doing the biting in India? It might be a good idea to find out.
All of these things are word games: incendiary word choices, empty "glittering generalizations" ("even when a pit bull is challenged by a group of humans it will not retreat"; "owners leave them chained outside"), sarcasm ("it appears"), inaccuracies ("they are bred for delivering a 'sustained attack'"),and unsupportable "facts," like the advertisers' phrase "up to 40%." These are all gut responses on the part of the blogger and do not reflect any effort to provide data or useful suggestions for ameliorating the dog-bite problem, which obviously exists but has not been productively approached. The site uses terms throughout its pages that are meant to incite fear, such as "sustained attack," "dangerous breeds," and "dog-killing pits" without ever stopping to cite reputable sources or provide meaningful support. (For that matter, no distinction is ever made between attack and bite.) Again, Jowett and O'Donnell point out that propaganda "gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented." The intent of DogsBite.com is to reach the readers' guts, not their minds impact (usually much harder to do), but it is clearly not to effect any much-needed change. Therefore, DogsBite.org is in reality interfering with the likelihood that dog bite policy will ever be solved.
But what other techniques, whether deliberate or accidental, are evident in DogsBite.org besides word games? Several.
Fallacy of Division: "An argument which requires, but does not defend, the premise that what applies to the whole (or group) will apply to all (or most) of the parts (or members). This premise is not true in general, and therefore ought not be accepted as true without further defense in any specific topic area" (http://mcckc.edu/longview/ctac/glossary.htm#F). For example, in the claim "Pit bulls attack adults nearly as often as they attack children, a characteristic not found in any other breed" (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-statistics.htm), the writer claims that all pit bulls attack adults (note that the sentence is not quantified), but does not make any attempt to defend or develop this idea. Therefore, the reader is forced to conclude that all pit bulls will attack adults (or children), meaning that each member of the larger pit bull group will conform to its group behavior. However, not all pit bulls bite adults (or children). What this means is that the identified group, pit bulls, is not the accurately identified group of biting dogs. The writer has failed to correctly identify the offending group, such as hungry dogs or stray dogs or abused dogs, which groups pit bulls might belong to, or might not.
Principle of Charitable Interpretation: "A rule for extracting arguments from unstructured or poorly-structured collections of statements, enjoining the extractor to construct from them the best possible argument, given the author's point of view" (http://mcckc.edu/longview/ctac/glossary.htm#F). Observe the problems inherent in the following statement: "By compiling US and Canadian press accounts between 1982 and 2007, Animal People News determined the types of breeds most responsible for death and serious injury." (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-study-deaths-maimings.htm). In this case, the logic problem is in charitably giving Animal People News credit for using poor sources, and for attempting to assert the validity those sources. DogsBite.org should not have naively believed that a collection of stories drawn from the press actually contain valid conclusions. Reporters are rarely dog experts. For example, when a dog is a Labrador/pit bull cross, the press typically identify the dog as a pit bull cross. In another article elsewhere, a headline reads "Toronto Boy Injured in Attack by Rottweiler," but later the article acknowledges that the dog was a Rottweiler/labrador cross (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:ijJkKV87r7YJ:www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1112118263974_107527463/%3Fhub%3DCanada+pit+bull+labrador+cross+attack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=safari). Had the press referred to the dog as a Labrador cross, the statistics might be different. So one must stop and reconsider when citing the press as a reliable source of dog bite per breed information. The press do not print many stories about border collie bites, but that does not mean border collies don't bite. They do.
Emperor's New Clothes: AKA any idiot would know that! In one DogsBite.org blog, the following paragraphs appear:
The boy told EMS workers that he had been playing in the backyard at his grandfather's home on Varner Road in Davenport and had hit the dog on the head and was bitten. The dog, a 2-year-old black and brown pit bull, was on a leash at the time. Animal Control took custody of the dog. The dog's owner was not identified in initial reports. (Let's hope the owner is not the grandpa.)
The article did not explain the boy's "hit" to the dog's head. Was it a tap? Was it a mighty wallop delivered by 6-year old strength? It's indisputable that all dogs bite, particularly if they feel threatened. It's also indisputable that when a pit bull bites, a LifeFlight helicopter is often called. There's no such thing as "roadside" treatment after a pit bull bites a child. ("Bitten by Pit Bull, Boy Flown to Hospital," www.dogsbite.org/blog/index.html)
This blog has several problems, not the least of which being the sarcastic rhetorical questions, but later in the selection the word indisputable appears twice in contexts that do not warrant it because they are in fact disputable. It is not indisputable that all dogs bite, considering that the vast majority have not. They have the capacity to bite, but they do not all do it. Furthermore, it is not indisputable that pit bull bites often result in LifeFlight rescues (although "often" could mean anything); it is only indisputable that the press report pit bull bites that require LifeFlight rescues. There is no data offered on the pit bull bites that were significant enough to warrant LifeFlight, so the claim remains disputable. Finally, there certainly is such a thing as "roadside" treatment after a pit bull bites a child. Only one in six people who are bitten require medical treatment, and that treatment is not specified; it is often administration of tetanus shots. Since all bites that break the skin should be examined and many of them will require new tetanus injections (in an emergency room), one must wonder what the other five bites of the six amounted to. Without belittling the trauma of being bitten, one must recognize that the vast majority of dog bites are not reported; those that are result in either no action or minimal action; the few remaining very rarely result in LifeFlight evacuation to a hospital. And of those that do, only a small percentage is attributable to pit bulls. Therfore, it is incendiary to claim that there is no "roadside" treatment of a pit bull bite and that LifeFlight is often required. These tactics do little that results in successful mitigation of the dog bite problem; they merely contribute to unproductive hysteria. In addition, the Grandpa sentence strongly indicates an assumption that anybody reading the blog would agree that the grandfather would deserve a little extra guilt.
Religious authority: some hate groups will use the authority of religion to persuade visitors and justify their views – even if they have no religious affiliation. This might include the use of religious terminology, references to scriptures, and references to leaders as "ministers" or "pastors." DogsBite.org participates in a minor lapse into religious authority, which is a major source of appeal to emotion, when it recommends the book On Behalf of Innocents: A True Story of a Mission, Faith, and a Promise Fulfilled ("Following a life-threatening attack by vicious dogs, author Caress Garten reflects upon the power of individuals to change the law"). Apart from the emotional appeal, appeals to religious authority lures religious people into perhaps giving the opinion more credit than is due.
Scientific legitimacy: some hate groups borrow authority from science or medicine to legitimize their ideologies. This might be done through the use of pseudo-scientific language, or by citing or recontextualizing academic works. DogsBite.org notes:
Dog bite fatalites in the US (1979-1998) Researchers reviewed a 20-year period from 1979 to 1998 to determine the types of breeds most responsible for US dog bite fatalities.
At least 25 breeds of dogs were involved in 238 human dog bite related fatalities during this time span. Pit bulls and rottweilers were involved in over half of these fatalities and from 1997-1998, over 60%. *
Researchers note that it is extremely unlikely that pit bulls and rottweilers accounted for 60% of dogs in US households during this period thus, there appeared to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities. (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-statistics.htm)
However, what DogBite.org conspicuously fails to point out is the conclusion that the study itself reaches: "From a scientific point of view, we are unaware of any formal evaluation of the effectiveness of breed specific legislation in preventing fatal or non-fatal dog bites." Additionally, the study itself was flawed for two reasons: 1) it gathered information from the HSUS but ignored information regarding the circumstances surrounding the bites; and 2) its data "search strategy involved scanning the text of newspapers and periodicals," which we already know is a repository for sensationalistic and incomplete rather than scientific data. In fact, what that study measured was how the press evaluates dog bites (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/dogbreeds.pdf). Therefore, to claim that it is an accurate study is to believe that the press is unbiased, non-sensationalistic, and very well educated about dogs.
The three stage attack of hate mongers typically proceeds as follows:
Invalidation myth (prejudice): definition of target group as inferior and/or dangerous.
Invalidation ideology: development of theory of vilification and provision of supporting arguments and "evidence "to" justify "denial of fundamental human rights
Platform for action: incitement to hatred and harm (discriminatory action); denial of human rights. (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.002/kallen.html)
Invalidation is a defensive method one uses when one feels the need to take one's opposition down a peg in order to "win," and it often denotes a certain insecurity in one's own stance. This is the approach Rush Limbaugh is famous for, and DogsBite.org and other sites like it find sneering, or invalidation of one's opponent, a useful technique. For example, the passing comment "Another person seriously injured because a pit bull owner refuses to abide by safety laws" is the kind of a comment that could easily be valid but as written is merely a side-swipe at an unknown person. Without any kind of information about the circumstances of the "attack," including details that the press decided not to include in their report, we cannot merely accept that judgment as warranted. Also, in the sentence "say 'I' [sic] if you think Tank will get returned to his owner," the writer betrays doubt that the owner of "Tank" should have the same right to due process that everyone else has. Therefore, on DogsBite.org, the three stage attack presents as follows:
Invalidation myth: All pit bulls are vicious (unsupportable but frequently repeated).
Invalidation ideology: Law enforcement, science, and doctors agree (unsupportable).
Platform for action: Ban pit bulls (decrease the civil rights of pit bull owners). This is the entire attack of DogsBite.org. It is also the attack of most of the groups or individuals who would insist upon breed specific legislation and bans. While these groups would insist that the civil rights of bite victims have been violated, that is, of course, improbable. If it were that simple, pit bulls would have been gone long ago, along with guns, cars, cigarettes, alcohol, rivers, trees, rocks, and anything else that might possibly do damage to the human body.
CONCLUSION
There are dozens of other logical problems on DogsBite.org and dozens of other websites like DogsBite.org, but there is little reason to continue analyzing into infinity. The point here is that we must all be very very careful about whom we believe regarding emotionally charged issues. Because we are used to propaganda, we do not detect it, thereby allowing people with agendas to make our policies for us. DogsBite.org is certainly not the only such flawed site, nor are the abovementioned techniques unique to dog groups. These are all methods that are common to ALL propaganda groups, including TV producers and government officials, and hate groups as well. DogsBite.org is, for our purposes, merely a good example of how hysteria and emotion promulgated by a hate group get in the way of actually making productive social change. Propaganda is the method that people use (either deliberately or as a by-product of their own passionate and uncontrolled response to a topic) to influence the opinions of others by obfuscating real information. The idea that they feel they must manipulate us in our ideals and opinions is insulting. The "editors" of DogsBite.org is, in fact, a self-proclaimed writer of "flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir," not a analyst or policy maker, just as other purveyors of propaganda are not true analysts but destructive manipulators. DogsBite.org serves as a useful reminder to us to beware all the websites that are operated by self-proclaimed experts whose agendas merely get in the way of real progress.
About the Author:
Jacquelline Marshall owns three German Shepherd Dogs and teaches at UC Davis
Thanks Michele!!!!
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The New Hate Group
Arming Ourselves against Online Propaganda and Hate Groups
By Jacquelline Marshall
Before we get far with reading certain websites, we all catch on, whether consciously or not, to the sites' biases. For example, while there is obviously a certain amount of truth to the title of the site DogsBite.org, we can see that it also has some inherent problems. First, due to lack of quantification, the words state that ALL dogs bite ALL the time. Correctly, it should read "SomeDogsBiteSometimes." That'd be a little more fair. Second, it implies that ONLY dogs bite. On the contrary...I've been bitten by human children. So perhaps a good title for a site would be SomeDogsBiteSometimesJustLikeAllOtherOrganismsWithTeethDo.org. That'd be even more fair, and pretty darned unarguable. What's more, it wouldn't waste time with deliberately inflammatory or misleading use of emotion and bias when it could actually be preventing dog bites.
But DogsBite.org is a place where desperate people gather to hate. The editors there would have us believe that stopping dog attacks is their life-work's motive, but in fact that does not explain why the site's approach is so vitriolic and its method propagandistic. In fact, the editors could well have invested their considerable energy in seeking a more useful approach to the problem of irresponsible dog owners and the damage their animals cause. Whether or not one believes that two dog breeds are ready, willing, and able to destroy families everywhere, as DogsBite.org asserts on its homepage, one must wonder if there might be a more effective means to the end of public safety than fear-mongering and hysteria.
So because of DogsBite.org's name, before we even get into the site to examine its premises, we should be aware that we are headed into a Land of Weak Logic. In the end we will have to ignore all emotion, our own and DogsBite.org's, and look for some real content. We will have to ascertain whether such sites have any foundation if we are to attempt to solve the real problem and keep people safe from very real harm. Otherwise, we run the same risk that law enforcement faces daily: We want to lay blame, but if we aren't careful we accuse the wrong individual and the real criminal is free to wreak havoc until someone carefully analyzes the evidence and ignores the fireworks. In other words, we will have to put on our Critical Thinking Hats.
According to Sonoma State University's website,
"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.... It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference" (http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.cfm).
What all this means is that critical thinking is hard. It means burrowing beneath all the wildly convincing assertions in propagandistic writing, which are convincing because they are so passionate.
In Propaganda and Persuasion, Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell write that
"Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist....[It] is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda."
In other words, propaganda is irresponsible, manipulative, and dangerous. It causes people to forget to use their brains and to succumb instead to emotionalism, which solves nothing in the political or even ethical arena. Therefore, as was previously noted, in order to most effectively deal with controversial subjects, we must learn to actively and skillfully analyze data to help us resist falling prey to propaganda and clear the way for the best solutions to whatever problems we face. In this case, we must find the solution to dog bites, and we must not be fooled by foggy thinking or cheap tactics if we are ever to eliminate these injuries. Nothing that obscures the facts is actually useful. DogsBite.org employs several techniques common to propagandists and hate groups.
"A hate group is an organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi party." (http://www.umes.edu/police/CrimeDefs.html)
That definition is from a law enforcement perspective, so obviously its focus is on human recipients of hatred; however, it's not a far stretch to include dogs by making a couple minor changes that do not in fact change the intent of the definition: A hate group is an organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against any idea which differs from that of the members of the organization. That's still the same thing; it's just a definition of a hate group the object of whose animosity is not necessarily human. Obviously with dog breeds, religion, sexual orientation, etc., are not relevant (although race may be), but the definition clearly applies to the attitude certain dog groups have for other dog groups. Or certain bird groups for other bird groups, or certain antique radio groups for others—it's all the same principle when passions are high and people resort to mental force. Hate groups do not open meaningful dialogues; their intent is merely to pummel their opposition--and the weapons in their arsenals are numerous and confusing. Any manipulative organization would do to demonstrate this principle. We are focusing on DogsBite.org as an example of how persons with certain agendas do damage by letting their emotions get the better of them in their attempt to control the ideas of others.
Common Techniques
The advertising industry knows how to control the first on our list of propagandist techniques: word play. For example, consider the packaging that claims that a product "helps reduce wrinkles up to 40%." First, the word helps means that the user must do some other things as well to reduce those unsightly wrinkles, if the product only helps. Second, it helps reduce wrinkles, not eliminate them. Third, it helps reduce up to 40%, but note that 0% is also "up to 40%." So the claim in fact goes like this: "This product, in conjunction with other approaches, assists in the reduction but not elimination of wrinkles, but in fact the other approaches may be doing the work we are helping with, if it happens at all." Advertisers have been employing psychologists for decades to help them sell products; this is not conjecture nor paranoia but a well-known technique (known as weasel words) for suggesting but not committing to claims about the product. Similarly, DogsBite.org uses word games. For example, a blog entitled "India's Outrageous Dog Bite Problem" includes the following:
"It appears this India town (population of 3.5 million), and likely many other India towns, is swarming with loose, unsterilized dogs. It also appears officials have been neglectful in dealing with the problem. Hopefully pit bulls and other fighting breeds have not been imported into the country."
This sounds simple enough, but it has several problems. First, what does "appears" mean in this context? That the town is not swarming with loose, unsterilized dogs, but looks like it is? In reality it means that the writer does not know and does not have data supporting that assertion.
Second, what does "likely many other India towns" mean? Does the writer not know? And why use the word "town" for a huge city of 3.5 million? In critical thinking, this is known as the "plain folks" appeal. It is likely to produce a defensive/protective reaction, as Americans are fond of little towns and would hate to see them devastated by raging dog packs. Third, "swarming" is a word intended to instill fear, as in the normal reaction to a swarm of bees or a science fiction alien invasion; however, the word doesn't really have any concrete meaning in this context. How many dogs per city block is that? Data would be much more useful in assessing India's situation than scary words.
Fourth, the concept of" loose, sterilized dogs" is unclear. Do India's street dogs actually belong to anyone? According to animalsheltering.org, they do not.. Nevertheless, the organization Help in Suffering has sterilized 27,000 street dogs in India, resulting in a reduction in dog population by 28%. Therefore, even the generalization that the dogs are unsterilized is not entirely accurate. And HIS claims that those dogs are "not really pets, not really feral," which might explain why they bite.
Fifth, why does "it seem" that the officials have been neglectful? This may perhaps be because the officials have also been unable to control and provide for swarms of unsupervised and starving street children, either, for whom dog bites are the least of their worries. Perhaps focusing on the controlling and providing for children in India worries these "neglectful officials" more.
Finally, the last sentence is merely an attempt to chill a reader's blood, and is meaningless in any productive discussion. Interestingly, it may also be counter-productive to the "editors'" own agenda, because it indicates that dogs other than pit bulls are doing the biting—which is a direct contradiction to their assertion that pit bulls and rottweilers are responsible for 70% of dog bites simply because of their bloodlines. Who is doing the biting in India? It might be a good idea to find out.
All of these things are word games: incendiary word choices, empty "glittering generalizations" ("even when a pit bull is challenged by a group of humans it will not retreat"; "owners leave them chained outside"), sarcasm ("it appears"), inaccuracies ("they are bred for delivering a 'sustained attack'"),and unsupportable "facts," like the advertisers' phrase "up to 40%." These are all gut responses on the part of the blogger and do not reflect any effort to provide data or useful suggestions for ameliorating the dog-bite problem, which obviously exists but has not been productively approached. The site uses terms throughout its pages that are meant to incite fear, such as "sustained attack," "dangerous breeds," and "dog-killing pits" without ever stopping to cite reputable sources or provide meaningful support. (For that matter, no distinction is ever made between attack and bite.) Again, Jowett and O'Donnell point out that propaganda "gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented." The intent of DogsBite.com is to reach the readers' guts, not their minds impact (usually much harder to do), but it is clearly not to effect any much-needed change. Therefore, DogsBite.org is in reality interfering with the likelihood that dog bite policy will ever be solved.
But what other techniques, whether deliberate or accidental, are evident in DogsBite.org besides word games? Several.
Fallacy of Division: "An argument which requires, but does not defend, the premise that what applies to the whole (or group) will apply to all (or most) of the parts (or members). This premise is not true in general, and therefore ought not be accepted as true without further defense in any specific topic area" (http://mcckc.edu/longview/ctac/glossary.htm#F). For example, in the claim "Pit bulls attack adults nearly as often as they attack children, a characteristic not found in any other breed" (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-statistics.htm), the writer claims that all pit bulls attack adults (note that the sentence is not quantified), but does not make any attempt to defend or develop this idea. Therefore, the reader is forced to conclude that all pit bulls will attack adults (or children), meaning that each member of the larger pit bull group will conform to its group behavior. However, not all pit bulls bite adults (or children). What this means is that the identified group, pit bulls, is not the accurately identified group of biting dogs. The writer has failed to correctly identify the offending group, such as hungry dogs or stray dogs or abused dogs, which groups pit bulls might belong to, or might not.
Principle of Charitable Interpretation: "A rule for extracting arguments from unstructured or poorly-structured collections of statements, enjoining the extractor to construct from them the best possible argument, given the author's point of view" (http://mcckc.edu/longview/ctac/glossary.htm#F). Observe the problems inherent in the following statement: "By compiling US and Canadian press accounts between 1982 and 2007, Animal People News determined the types of breeds most responsible for death and serious injury." (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-study-deaths-maimings.htm). In this case, the logic problem is in charitably giving Animal People News credit for using poor sources, and for attempting to assert the validity those sources. DogsBite.org should not have naively believed that a collection of stories drawn from the press actually contain valid conclusions. Reporters are rarely dog experts. For example, when a dog is a Labrador/pit bull cross, the press typically identify the dog as a pit bull cross. In another article elsewhere, a headline reads "Toronto Boy Injured in Attack by Rottweiler," but later the article acknowledges that the dog was a Rottweiler/labrador cross (http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:ijJkKV87r7YJ:www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1112118263974_107527463/%3Fhub%3DCanada+pit+bull+labrador+cross+attack&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=safari). Had the press referred to the dog as a Labrador cross, the statistics might be different. So one must stop and reconsider when citing the press as a reliable source of dog bite per breed information. The press do not print many stories about border collie bites, but that does not mean border collies don't bite. They do.
Emperor's New Clothes: AKA any idiot would know that! In one DogsBite.org blog, the following paragraphs appear:
The boy told EMS workers that he had been playing in the backyard at his grandfather's home on Varner Road in Davenport and had hit the dog on the head and was bitten. The dog, a 2-year-old black and brown pit bull, was on a leash at the time. Animal Control took custody of the dog. The dog's owner was not identified in initial reports. (Let's hope the owner is not the grandpa.)
The article did not explain the boy's "hit" to the dog's head. Was it a tap? Was it a mighty wallop delivered by 6-year old strength? It's indisputable that all dogs bite, particularly if they feel threatened. It's also indisputable that when a pit bull bites, a LifeFlight helicopter is often called. There's no such thing as "roadside" treatment after a pit bull bites a child. ("Bitten by Pit Bull, Boy Flown to Hospital," www.dogsbite.org/blog/index.html)
This blog has several problems, not the least of which being the sarcastic rhetorical questions, but later in the selection the word indisputable appears twice in contexts that do not warrant it because they are in fact disputable. It is not indisputable that all dogs bite, considering that the vast majority have not. They have the capacity to bite, but they do not all do it. Furthermore, it is not indisputable that pit bull bites often result in LifeFlight rescues (although "often" could mean anything); it is only indisputable that the press report pit bull bites that require LifeFlight rescues. There is no data offered on the pit bull bites that were significant enough to warrant LifeFlight, so the claim remains disputable. Finally, there certainly is such a thing as "roadside" treatment after a pit bull bites a child. Only one in six people who are bitten require medical treatment, and that treatment is not specified; it is often administration of tetanus shots. Since all bites that break the skin should be examined and many of them will require new tetanus injections (in an emergency room), one must wonder what the other five bites of the six amounted to. Without belittling the trauma of being bitten, one must recognize that the vast majority of dog bites are not reported; those that are result in either no action or minimal action; the few remaining very rarely result in LifeFlight evacuation to a hospital. And of those that do, only a small percentage is attributable to pit bulls. Therfore, it is incendiary to claim that there is no "roadside" treatment of a pit bull bite and that LifeFlight is often required. These tactics do little that results in successful mitigation of the dog bite problem; they merely contribute to unproductive hysteria. In addition, the Grandpa sentence strongly indicates an assumption that anybody reading the blog would agree that the grandfather would deserve a little extra guilt.
Religious authority: some hate groups will use the authority of religion to persuade visitors and justify their views – even if they have no religious affiliation. This might include the use of religious terminology, references to scriptures, and references to leaders as "ministers" or "pastors." DogsBite.org participates in a minor lapse into religious authority, which is a major source of appeal to emotion, when it recommends the book On Behalf of Innocents: A True Story of a Mission, Faith, and a Promise Fulfilled ("Following a life-threatening attack by vicious dogs, author Caress Garten reflects upon the power of individuals to change the law"). Apart from the emotional appeal, appeals to religious authority lures religious people into perhaps giving the opinion more credit than is due.
Scientific legitimacy: some hate groups borrow authority from science or medicine to legitimize their ideologies. This might be done through the use of pseudo-scientific language, or by citing or recontextualizing academic works. DogsBite.org notes:
Dog bite fatalites in the US (1979-1998) Researchers reviewed a 20-year period from 1979 to 1998 to determine the types of breeds most responsible for US dog bite fatalities.
At least 25 breeds of dogs were involved in 238 human dog bite related fatalities during this time span. Pit bulls and rottweilers were involved in over half of these fatalities and from 1997-1998, over 60%. *
Researchers note that it is extremely unlikely that pit bulls and rottweilers accounted for 60% of dogs in US households during this period thus, there appeared to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities. (http://www.dogsbite.org/bite-statistics.htm)
However, what DogBite.org conspicuously fails to point out is the conclusion that the study itself reaches: "From a scientific point of view, we are unaware of any formal evaluation of the effectiveness of breed specific legislation in preventing fatal or non-fatal dog bites." Additionally, the study itself was flawed for two reasons: 1) it gathered information from the HSUS but ignored information regarding the circumstances surrounding the bites; and 2) its data "search strategy involved scanning the text of newspapers and periodicals," which we already know is a repository for sensationalistic and incomplete rather than scientific data. In fact, what that study measured was how the press evaluates dog bites (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/dogbreeds.pdf). Therefore, to claim that it is an accurate study is to believe that the press is unbiased, non-sensationalistic, and very well educated about dogs.
The three stage attack of hate mongers typically proceeds as follows:
Invalidation myth (prejudice): definition of target group as inferior and/or dangerous.
Invalidation ideology: development of theory of vilification and provision of supporting arguments and "evidence "to" justify "denial of fundamental human rights
Platform for action: incitement to hatred and harm (discriminatory action); denial of human rights. (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.002/kallen.html)
Invalidation is a defensive method one uses when one feels the need to take one's opposition down a peg in order to "win," and it often denotes a certain insecurity in one's own stance. This is the approach Rush Limbaugh is famous for, and DogsBite.org and other sites like it find sneering, or invalidation of one's opponent, a useful technique. For example, the passing comment "Another person seriously injured because a pit bull owner refuses to abide by safety laws" is the kind of a comment that could easily be valid but as written is merely a side-swipe at an unknown person. Without any kind of information about the circumstances of the "attack," including details that the press decided not to include in their report, we cannot merely accept that judgment as warranted. Also, in the sentence "say 'I' [sic] if you think Tank will get returned to his owner," the writer betrays doubt that the owner of "Tank" should have the same right to due process that everyone else has. Therefore, on DogsBite.org, the three stage attack presents as follows:
Invalidation myth: All pit bulls are vicious (unsupportable but frequently repeated).
Invalidation ideology: Law enforcement, science, and doctors agree (unsupportable).
Platform for action: Ban pit bulls (decrease the civil rights of pit bull owners). This is the entire attack of DogsBite.org. It is also the attack of most of the groups or individuals who would insist upon breed specific legislation and bans. While these groups would insist that the civil rights of bite victims have been violated, that is, of course, improbable. If it were that simple, pit bulls would have been gone long ago, along with guns, cars, cigarettes, alcohol, rivers, trees, rocks, and anything else that might possibly do damage to the human body.
CONCLUSION
There are dozens of other logical problems on DogsBite.org and dozens of other websites like DogsBite.org, but there is little reason to continue analyzing into infinity. The point here is that we must all be very very careful about whom we believe regarding emotionally charged issues. Because we are used to propaganda, we do not detect it, thereby allowing people with agendas to make our policies for us. DogsBite.org is certainly not the only such flawed site, nor are the abovementioned techniques unique to dog groups. These are all methods that are common to ALL propaganda groups, including TV producers and government officials, and hate groups as well. DogsBite.org is, for our purposes, merely a good example of how hysteria and emotion promulgated by a hate group get in the way of actually making productive social change. Propaganda is the method that people use (either deliberately or as a by-product of their own passionate and uncontrolled response to a topic) to influence the opinions of others by obfuscating real information. The idea that they feel they must manipulate us in our ideals and opinions is insulting. The "editors" of DogsBite.org is, in fact, a self-proclaimed writer of "flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir," not a analyst or policy maker, just as other purveyors of propaganda are not true analysts but destructive manipulators. DogsBite.org serves as a useful reminder to us to beware all the websites that are operated by self-proclaimed experts whose agendas merely get in the way of real progress.
About the Author:
Jacquelline Marshall owns three German Shepherd Dogs and teaches at UC Davis