Dog days

I've always felt like I grok dog behavior better than I grok human behavior.

I can't tell you the number of times I've looked at something my fellow humans have done and thought, "Who does that?"  Or, more to the point, "What the hell is wrong with you?"  Whereas with dogs, I usually (1) can tell from their body language what they're thinking and feeling, and (2) understand why they did what they did.

Even when they are aggressive, bite or attack people, their behavior is almost always consistent and explainable -- and predictable if you can read dog body language.

Angie Johnston, a Ph.D. candidate who works at the Canine Cognition Center at Yale University, agrees.  Her doctoral research has to do with the human/dog bond, and using facial and body language cues to understand what dogs are thinking.  She's working with Kathy Shae, of the Paws-n-Effect Canine Training Center, to work with and observe dogs interacting with strangers, their owners, and each other, in an effort to parse the mysteries of the canine personality.

"People love their dogs and want to know what they’re thinking, but we can’t ask them," Johnston said.  "The only way we can find out what they’re thinking is by getting these different studies to try to get inside their head."

Her studies and those of her colleagues have found that dogs release oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and love, when they're with their owners.  "When you see the same hormone released in dogs and families that are released in humans and infants, it suggests that some really similar things are going on," she said.  "So, I think dogs do love us...  It’s something dogs have developed and as they have lived with us, it has grown into true love."

Shae highlighted the uniqueness of the human/canine bond.  "It’s intuitive for them, it’s nonverbal and it’s empathetic in its purest sense," she said.  "Historically, humans and dogs have been partnered for tens of thousands of years, and of the 20,000-plus species on the Earth, dogs and humans have had a unique relationship...  There’s some connection there that’s incredibly, incredibly deep.  I think we’ve lost empathy and they’ve gained empathy in an evolutionary sense, and that’s why we’re partnered."

The fact that this study, which is still incomplete and has not yet been published, was the subject of a news story this week is timely.  In the last couple of weeks, my wife and I have been perusing the listings over at PetFinder, a wonderful service that acts as a clearinghouse for animals who are available for adoption at various shelters in your area.  We met some dogs who were clearly wrong for completely prosaic reasons -- a couple of boisterous puppies who played a little too roughly for our sweet, gray-around-the-muzzle coonhound Lena, for example.  There was one tragic pit bull mix, gorgeous, but so afraid of people that he couldn't be trusted not to bite -- we had to meet him through a chain link fence, and even then he snarled and snapped at us.

Most interesting was a beautiful, blue-eyed cattle dog mix who wasn't aggressive at all, but just -- disconnected, uninterested in interacting with us.  Out on a leash, he was focused on smelling everything in our path (not that unusual), but there was something about his body language that was off.  He paid no attention at all to either of us, not just in the sense of obeying commands (that stuff can be taught), but as far as any curiosity about us.  My doggie intuition said, "No, he's not going to work out well."

Then we met a big, loping black lab/Akita mix.

He was, we were told, a little shy, especially around men.  They let him out into the meet-and-greet room, and he walked right up to me and gave me a big lick in the face.  The trainer's eyebrows went up.

"Or maybe not so much," he said.

Then we brought in Lena, so she and Big Black Dog could see if they liked each other.  They did the obligatory mutual butt sniff, and both tails started wagging.  Second box checked off.

Best of all, he was clearly focused on us, and very curious about these two strangers who were leading him around.  It didn't take us long to come to a decision.  There was something about him that just clicked.  My second sense about dogs said, "He's the one."

So without further ado, allow me to introduce:  Guinness.

We've had him for less than 24 hours, and already he's played a rollicking game of chase in the back yard with Lena (she's been in a positive depressive state since her buddy, our adorable rescue mutt Grendel, died a couple of months ago; this is the happiest I've seen her since that happened).  He's chased squeaky tennis balls 17,839 times across the living room floor (and counting).  He's already learning a few commands -- we're signing him up for obedience training soon, and hoping that brain-wise, he's inherited more from his Akita ancestry than his black lab.  He is a little skittish, still -- the shelter manager didn't give us details about his past (probably a good thing) but just said he "wasn't treated very well" by his former owners.  He startles if you reach for him suddenly, but that's another thing I can tell he'll learn to get past with some love, affection, and a safe warm home.

So I think my doggie intuition has chalked up another win.  He's a good 'un, as my grandma used to say.

But now I need to go, because he just walked into my office with a squeaky tennis ball.  Some things take priority, you know?

Magnets, politics, and preconceived notions

Two stories showed up just in the last couple of days that are interesting primarily in juxtaposition.

First, we had a scholarly paper published in PLOS One, entitled "Copper Bracelets and Magnetic Wrist Straps for Rheumatoid Arthritis – Analgesic and Anti-Inflammatory Effects: A Randomised Double-Blind Placebo Controlled Crossover Trial."  In it, we find out what most skeptics suspected from the get-go -- that magnetic and copper bracelets and anklets and necklaces and shoe-sole inserts and so on are a complete non-starter when it comes to treating disease.

These claims have been around for years, and usually rely on pseudoscientific bosh of the kind you find in this site, wherein we have the following "explanation:"

Life developed under the influence of the earth's geomagnetic field.  We are surrounded by a sea of magnetism.  The human body, its individual organs and each of the millions of cells making up the organs and the body bathed by this sea are magnetically charged.  Cell regulation, tissue function and life itself are controlled by internal electromagnetic currents.  In disease states, these electromagnetic potentials are altered but fortunately can be favorably influenced by the external application of magnetics...  Used correctly, Electro-Magnetic Energy Fields are a proven therapeutic modality.  Research and clinical experience has established that the very gentle, EULF, low power pulsed magnetic energy improves the repair of damaged tissue and reduction of pain, improved oxygen transport in the red blood cells, increased nutrient and oxygen uptake at the cellular level.  Greater elasticity of blood vessels, changes in acid/alkaline balance, altering of enzyme and hormone activity, all play an important role in the return to good health...  Negative magnetic fields oxygenate and alkalize by aiding the body's defense against bacteria, fungi, and parasites, all of which thrive in an acid medium.  In degenerative diseases, calcium is found deposited around inflamed joints, bruised areas on the hell, and in bones and kidney stones.  Infections occur because they function well in an acidic, oxygen deficient state.

Which, in my opinion, should win some kind of award for packing the most bullshit into a single paragraph.

So the whole copper-and-magnet thing never did make much sense.  But don't take my word for it; here's what Richardson, Gunadasa, Bland, and MacPherson said, after having run a double-blind efficacy test on magnetic bracelets:

The results of this study may be understood in a number of ways. The most obvious interpretation is that they demonstrate that magnetic wrist straps, and also copper bracelets, have little if any specific therapeutic effects (i.e. beyond those of a placebo) on pain, inflammation, or disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis...  The fact that we were unable to demonstrate... a difference for the primary outcome measure on its own, nor indeed any of the other core measures employed, strongly suggests that wearing magnetic wrists straps, or copper bracelets, in order to minimise disease progression and alleviate symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis is a practice which lacks clinical efficacy.

But as I said, this is hardly a surprise to skeptics, who doubted the whole thing pretty much from the outset.

The second story at first seems to connect to the first in only a tangential fashion at best.  Chris Mooney, a skeptical writer of well-deserved high reputation, wrote about it this week in Grist in a piece called "Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to do Math."   In Mooney's article we hear about a study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues, of Yale Law School, in which two groups of people were asked to solve the same (rather difficult) mathematical problem -- but one group was given the problem in the context of its being about "the effectiveness of a new skin cream for rashes," and the other group that it was about "the effectiveness of a new law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns in public."

What Kahan's study found was that when the problem involved the relatively emotionally-neutral context of a skin cream, your ability to solve the problem correctly depended upon only one thing -- your skill at math.  In other words, both Democrats and Republicans scored well on the problem if they were good at math, and both scored poorly if they were bad at math.  But when the problem involved handguns, a different pattern emerged.  Here's how Mooney explains the results:

So how did people fare on the handgun version of the problem? They performed quite differently than on the skin cream version, and strong political patterns emerged in the results — especially among people who are good at mathematical reasoning. Most strikingly, highly numerate liberal Democrats did almost perfectly when the right answer was that the concealed weapons ban does indeed work to decrease crime...  an outcome that favors their pro-gun-control predilections. But they did much worse when the correct answer was that crime increases in cities that enact the ban... 

The opposite was true for highly numerate conservative Republicans: They did just great when the right answer was that the ban didn't work... but poorly when the right answer was that it did. 

Put simply: when our emotions and preconceived notions are involved, data and logic have very little impact on our brains.

This is a profoundly unsettling conclusion, especially for people like me.  Every day I get up and write about how people should be more logical and rational and data-driven, and here Kahan et al. show me that all of the double-blind studies in the world aren't going to convince people that their magnet-studded copper bracelets aren't helping their arthritis pain if they already thought that they worked.

It does leave me with a sort of bleak feeling.  I mean, why test wacko claims, if the only people who will believe the results are the ones who already agreed with the result of the experiment beforehand?  Maybe this justifies the fact that I spend as much time making fun of woo-woos as I do arguing logically against them.  Appeal to people's emotions, and you're much more likely to get a result.

On the other hand, this feels to me way too much like sinking to their level.  I live in hope that the people who are convinced by what I write -- and maybe there have been a few -- have been swayed more by my logic than by my sarcasm.

But given human nature -- and Kahan's experiment -- maybe that's a losing proposition.