This post is also available in: Nederlands (Dutch)
8th of March 2023
The enforcement criteria introducing CFR (=nose length/skull length) as an enforcement criterion is based on the study by Packer et al 2015 (RVC = Royal Veterinary college). In this study, she posits a hypothesis (assumption) that nose length is a measure of BOAS severity:”Research shows that the more extreme the short-nosed build, the greater the risk of boas(xi)” (page 10 of the enforcement criteria) (xi = the Packer study 2015/RVC). This statement assumes that BOAS is breed-independent and the CFR is a measure. The incidence, whether BOAS occurs or not in the breed, and thus the breed no longer matter.
Apart from how this conclusion was arrived at through bias and falsification of Jane Ladlow’s conclusions in the study by Liu et al 2017 from Cambridge University, there is also a scientific interpretation error in the thesis that originates in the RVC hypothesis.
Professor em. Richard Gill, a statistical mathematician, studied the enforcement criteria in detail and showed in a paper (1) that this theorem , the CFR as a measure of BOAS severity, is incorrect. The reason was that there was no statistician involved in drafting the enforcement criteria who could review and make sense of the literature consulted. The conclusion drawn from these studies in the enforcement criteria is scientifically incorrect. The criterion CFR< 0.3 and 0.5 is based on manufactured science. Professor Gill states in his analysis regarding the RVC study that:
– ‘The populations for each breed (sometimes 1) was far too small to draw the conclusion’. Incidentally, this is also reflected in the Cambridge publication.
– No error analysis was done. Had this been done, no conclusion could have been drawn at all.
– Further analysis of the data from RVC’s study shows that from a CFR of 0.2 BOAS occurred about equally within the different breeds. In short, this shows that BOAS is breed-dependent and not affected by muzzle length.
– And that below 0.2 the pugs, due to the large number of dogs examined, gave the whole a distorted picture of BOAS-affected dogs with CFR < 0.2
Remarkably, Professor Gill gave a lecture on this at the Mathematics Department of Utrecht University, a few buildings away from the Department of Veterinary Medicine, on 23th of February, and despite an invitation, not a single person from the Department of Veterinary Medicine attended.
It seems that Utrecht is not open to scientific discussion. The report based on what we believe to be falsified and/or biased science should not be up for discussion.
Edwin Meyer Viol
(1) https://gill1109.com/2022/09/20/boas-breed-cfr/