[Donald Meaker]

Interesting study, but it leaves out the denominator.

How many dogs of a given species are out there? With 300 total attacks, if there are a million dogs out there, the people who are attacked probably have other traits that much more preferentially select them for attacks than the mere presence of a particular variety of dog.

Rather like the argument against the death penalty: We interview 300 people on death row, and none of them were deterred by the death penalty.

You have to look both at the number of events, and the number of exposures to calculate a rate.

I work as a reliability engineer, and bad stats or misleading partial stats are a bugaboo of mine.

[Rex Anderson]

the people who are attacked probably have other traits that much more preferentially select them for attacks than the mere presence of a particular variety of dog.

Like walking down the street? I disagree with you on this.
The following link has some interesting legal views of "provocation", and I do understand it is general, and not breed specific:
http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/whybite.html

[Old_Mil]

Rather like the argument against the death penalty: We interview 300 people on death row, and none of them were deterred by the death penalty.

The death penalty for felons, as for pit bulls, is not a "deterrant". Rather, it is an absolutely foolproof way to ensure that problem breeds are removed from the gene pool and rendered permanently inactive.