Oh the (seriously injurious) irony.

Remember the Maryland Court of Appeals decision labeling pitbulls as inherently dangerous?

Well apparently that was undermined by the Maryland House of Delegates.

One day after the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously approved a bill that overturned the Maryland Court of Appeals decision labeling Pit Bulls as “inherently dangerous,” an Edgemere woman was attacked and seriously injured by at least one of her two pit bulls. One of the Pit Bulls was later found a few blocks away and was so aggressive that Baltimore County Police officers were forced to shoot and kill it, the Baltimore Sun reports. – See more at: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/animal-rights/pit-bull-attacks-md-woman-1-day-after-state-overturns-court-decision-breed#sthash.lmqabn7f.dpuf

At least one of HER OWN DAMN DOGS?????

Hmm, wonder if anything has happened this month or was January a particularly bad one for pitbull attacks on innocent people and other nonhuman animals?

Horse and Rider pulled down by….well, it was probably a bichon actually.

Bankok….c’mon, it couldn’t have been an American Staffordshire Terrier (pitbull) now could it?

No one admitted to owning the pitbull …. duh, cause it was a dachshund!

I’m sure this Labrador was just asking for it….and they are only “pitbull-like” dogs….so that pretty much could be anything. like a Yorkie.

How do we know Fluffie didn’t just want to play?

Cockapoo….Vicious

UPDATE: naturally there was a Twitter side of the discussion today. I love this. Because when you get one of these dog lurvers on the line, they will quickly make absolutely insane statements. This one was by way of discussing which dogs might represent a threat to a person. @invertenerd opined:

You said maim a toddler, yorkies can and do maim little kids.

Here’s an image (source) that I grabbed off the web for reference. Now, admittedly the Yorkie is an aggressive little Napoleon complex of a dog. Which frankly is why it makes for such a good example. Even with its outsized attitude problem, however, the size of the beast tends to limit the damage. Admittedly in this figure, well…this is the scenario where a kid gets its face bitten, frequently enough. I stipulate that. So if we were talking “disfigure”…mmmm maybe. Arguable. Especially since owners of these little pocket dogs are more likely to be neglectful around kids. But I digress. The main point is how absolutely insane you are if you think that this kind of dog “maims” kids with anything like the same severity or probability that occurs with larger breeds. Insane. And of course that is the point. Dog owners are, to all intents and purposes, insane in their willful denial of what dogs do on a constant basis week in and weekout.

The R01 equivalent is the heart and soul of the NIH Extramural program

If you look around a bit on the NIH funding data at RePORT, you will find the following definitions.

Research Project Grants: Defined as R00, R01, R03, R15, R21, R22, R23, R29, R33, R34, R35, R36, R37, R55, R56, RC1, RC2, RC3, RC4, RF1, RL1, RL2, RL5, RL9, P01, P42, PN1, UA5, UC1, UC2, UC3, UC4, UC7, UF1, UH2, UH3, UH5, UM1, U01, U19, U34, DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4, and DP5 . Research projects were first coded to NLM in fiscal year 2007.

R01-Equivalent Grants: Defined as activity codes R01, R29 and R37.

The R29 was the FIRST award program and the R37 is MERIT, generally an extension of the noncompeting interval for a continuation R01 that scored really well. So…basically these are all R01s.

A post from Steven Salzberg begs to “Please save the unsolicited R01s” which includes this graph sourced from FASEB.

Making the same leap of considering these the “real” investigator initiated awards, we can see that the number of new awards in the past two Fiscal Years is lower than it has been since 95-96, *prior* to the doubling.

Everytime the NIH officialdom chooses to respond to criticism and concern about how their latest initiative will hurt the traditional strength (investigator initiated R01 equivalents) they try to claim that these are not paying the price. In various ways and with various incomplete analyses they try to give the impression that despite the invention of RC this and DP that, the failure to dismantle boondoggle Ps and the increased use of U-mechs…that the R01 remains sacred.

This graph gives you a retort.