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> (inspecting the genitals of 10,000 dogs while asking owners about their sexuality). Why is that 'obviously impossible'? How long does it take to look at a do

> (inspecting the genitals of 10,000 dogs while asking owners about their sexuality). Why is that 'obviously impossible'? How long does it take to look at a dog's genitals, 5 minutes? I haven't read the paper, but you could get a team of 10 undergrad (or grad) students, and send them out to different dog parks in the area. If each student inspects 20 dogs in a day (say they go to the park for a few hours--I assume many owners will say no) then you've got your data after 50 days of work. Say your students are only free on weekends (when dog parks are likely more busy, anyway) then it'll take you a little more than six months to gather all your doggie-dick-data. That's not at all an unreasonable length to run a study.

candiodari 8y ago
Because you can't get 10 undergrad students to each put in 50 full days of work. Just can't be done. I do hope you see that such a thing would not be a reasonable demand on these people. That's WAY too much. That's literally 1/5th of their entire school year.
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  Why not? When I review papers I am not trying to catch malicious authors. "This seems like an incredibly time consuming dataset to gather" is not a reasonable reason to reject. What is an honest author supposed to do in that situation? Collect less data?
waterhouse 8y ago
The paper does say this: "While I closely and respectfully examined the genitals of slightly fewer than ten thousand dogs, being careful not to cause alarm and moving away if any dog appeared uncomfortable...". The term "I" implies it was a single person doing all that. Elsewhere, it specifies that the total time spent observing dogs was 1000 hours. Elsewhere: "From 10 June 2016, to 10 June 2017, I stationed myself on benches that were in central observational locations at three dog parks in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Observation sessions varied widely according to the day of the week and time of day. These, however, lasted a minimum of two and no more than 7 h and concluded by 7:30 pm (due to visibility)." It'd be an average of nearly 3 hours per day, every day.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  > total time spent observing dogs was 1000 hours 10,000 dogs / 1000 hours = 6 minutes per dog. Ok, so it's somewhat implausible for one person to look at this many dog-genitals, but it's certainly physically possible. How many animals does a veterinary see in a year?

candiodari 8y ago

Because you can't get 10 undergrad students to each put in 50 full days of work. Just can't be done. I do hope you see that such a thing would not be a reasonable demand on these people. That's WAY too much. That's literally 1/5th of their entire school year.

UncleMeat 8y ago
Why not? When I review papers I am not trying to catch malicious authors. "This seems like an incredibly time consuming dataset to gather" is not a reasonable reason to reject. What is an honest author supposed to do in that situation? Collect less data?

waterhouse 8y ago

The paper does say this: "While I closely and respectfully examined the genitals of slightly fewer than ten thousand dogs, being careful not to cause alarm and moving away if any dog appeared uncomfortable...". The term "I" implies it was a single person doing all that. Elsewhere, it specifies that the total time spent observing dogs was 1000 hours. Elsewhere: "From 10 June 2016, to 10 June 2017, I stationed myself on benches that were in central observational locations at three dog parks in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Observation sessions varied widely according to the day of the week and time of day. These, however, lasted a minimum of two and no more than 7 h and concluded by 7:30 pm (due to visibility)." It'd be an average of nearly 3 hours per day, every day.

ForHackernews 8y ago
> total time spent observing dogs was 1000 hours 10,000 dogs / 1000 hours = 6 minutes per dog. Ok, so it's somewhat implausible for one person to look at this many dog-genitals, but it's certainly physically possible. How many animals does a veterinary see in a year?