As we all learned a few weeks ago, courtesy of John Oliver, sometimes
the media misrepresents scientific findings. Things get blown out of proportion
and the result can be total confidence in ideas that are totally wrong or
frustration leading to mistrust of science in general. Fortunately, humans are
equipped with an ability that few other animals demonstrate that allows us to
sift through the nonsense. In school you may have learned about it as “critical
thinking”, but in practice it is more like a bullshit-o-meter.
The ability to stop and ask ourselves “Wait,
does that result actually make sense?” is incredibly powerful. It actually lies
at the heart of science itself through the concept of peer-review, whereby
other researchers get the opportunity to tear a study apart before it ever sees
the light of day. Occasionally though, something slips through the cracks and
it is up to the eye of the reader to spot something fishy. Such a case popped
up on social media feeds around the world a last month with a study
claiming, intentionally evocatively, that dogs
don’t like hugs.
As a dog owner, I have my own biases that
would lead me to question this research in the first place. I’ve hugged every
dog I’ve ever owned and feel like my best friends would have hugged back had
they possessed the appropriate shoulder joints and bipedal orientation to do
so. But, that alone isn’t enough to discount the conclusions. Part of critical
thinking is having an open mind and accepting the idea that I may have been
wrong all these years… but I am within my rights to doubt it. That is where the
critical part comes in.
The first fact worth pointing out is that,
despite what the various click-bait style articles claimed, the research
findings were not reported in a respected, peer-reviewed science journal. They
were part of a blog post by UBC psychologist Stanley Coren, who was reporting
on some data he collected from looking at pictures on the internet. The idea
for the research came from Dr. Coren bringing his dog to school one day as part
of a “Doggy De-stress Day” for overworked undergrads. The well-meaning doctor
observed that his dog was not enjoying the hugs it was receiving and felt like
he was on to something.
Now, looking at the anecdote and the
research objectively, there are a couple of red flags right off the bat. A
major one is that “Doggy De-Stress Day” would be better named “Doggy Distress
Day” as any animal – dog, human, turtle, gibbon – that suddenly finds itself
being attacked by strangers who seem hell-bent on using their arms as
restraints is likely to get a little freaked out. As for the data that Dr.
Coren collected by analyzing internet photos of dogs being hugged (he found
that a whopping 81.6% of the dogs in the photos showed signs of stress), it also
presents a couple of problems. Chief among them is that the researcher has no
knowledge or control over the context in which the photos were taken. Are these
purely candid moments or are the dogs being forced to pose for an overly
excited person pointing a weird, flashing plastic thing (camera) at them?
A good way to evaluate the scientific merit
of a conclusion is to think about how you would go about researching it under
ideal conditions. If we want to test the hypothesis that dogs don’t like hugs,
there are simple ways to get closer to an answer than by looking at random
pictures online. First, you would want the dogs in an environment that doesn’t
stress them out, preferably at home. That would allow us to rule out the
surroundings as a source of stress and focus purely on the hugs. Second, you
would want to control for the person doing the hugging. In this case, the
findings are seeking to scold dog owners for forcing human affection onto dogs,
so the dogs should only be hugged by people they know and trust. Finally, we
would control the situation. Are the hugs happening out of the blue or is the
dog relaxing with its owner on the couch after a long day of hiking? These are
things that matter.
The point I’m trying to make is one that
compliments John Oliver’s message about media misleading people about science:
sometimes the research itself deserves to be questioned. You don’t need to
misrepresent flawed research to reach the wrong conclusion; the data will take
you there on its own. All the more reason to go back to the primary source of a
new and shocking idea and ask yourself a few basic questions about how the
findings were reached – well-meaning or not.
Until someone conducts a more controlled
study, hug your dog. It makes you feel good and that’s all your dog wants for
you anyway.
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