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Originally Posted by SirTeddykins  Hiya,
I don't believe we have directly communicated before!
Someone else has kindly offered to send me the full study so that I can read it in its entirety, thanks!
Don't worry about offending me! I am not easily offended.
As mentioned before, this is ONE study and as a researcher, I can say that one study would never be used to make a conclusive point in any scientific discipline. The imbalance of information is just ONE limitation of presenting this article and attempting to make generalizations from the information contained within.
I'm a researcher so I'm hardcore when it comes to criticism! I appreciate it, actually. It helps me develop!
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Hi, I'm a plant geneticist, so my expertise is genetics, but I pride myself on reading widely
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What I like about this study is the HUGE population size. One possible source of bias is that these data look only at insured dogs--I'm not sure how that would sway the data one way or the other. About the age of the dogs, the insurance company only insures dogs up to 10 years of age, so older dogs are excluded. If older dogs were included, that would probably bump up the rate of mammary tumors from that reported in this study. I don't know how it would affect the rate of pyometra.
Some of the studies cited by this paper were actually discussed previously in this thread, including a controversial "meta-study" purporting bias in papers that show a correlation of mammary tumors with unspayed dogs. I don't have a stake in this argument, but when I read that meta-study, I found it lacking in substance, to say the least.