About 15 years ago I volunteered with a pitbull rescue, then did a bunch of research on pitbull attacks in grad school. The problem then was that most statistics like this were unreliable once you saw what they labeled a pitbull. In most cases it was just any “mutt” was considered a pitbull. I don’t know if things have changed, never really looked into it since then, but I’m still a bit wary of stats like this without knowing their data is accurate.
Most rational people would, but it was an indicator that people who report dog bites did not know the difference.
And I’m not sure what my school had to do with it. At that time I was sourcing data from external sources, using data reported on police reports or by other organizations. Someone else commenting referenced the breed specific legislation advocacy group that was a source for some of that data.
My comment might not have been clear, I was criticising the data I was finding.