Public opinion of captive cetacean attractions: A critique of Wassermannet al. (2018)
Author and article information
Abstract
Wassermann et al. (2018, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5953) argued that previous public opinion research about marine mammal attractions should be considered unreliable due to possible biases in study design, which may have influenced participants’ responses. As in all scientific endeavors, reducing bias in order to gather more objective, evidence-based information is a worthy and commendable goal. Unfortunately, Wassermann et al. fell short in their efforts to produce an unbiased investigation into the beliefs of the general public about captive marine mammal attractions, due to a number of methodological flaws and biases in their own study. Specific concerns include a non-representative sample, methodological issues with data collection and coding procedures, a lack of reliability between data published and data provided, a failure to demonstrate inter-coder reliability, a failure to control for sequence effects in quantitative data, misrepresentation of databetween text and tables, and biased over-interpretation of qualitative responses. These errors undermine the authors’ conclusions and indeed render their findings uninterpretable. To achieve the goal of an unbiased understanding of public opinion about marine mammal attractions, further research on this topic is warranted using rigorous and sound scientific methodology.
Cite this as
2019. Public opinion of captive cetacean attractions: A critique of Wassermannet al. (2018) PeerJ Preprints 7:e27852v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27852v1Author comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints to provide commentary that counters some of the findings of Wassermann et al. (2018). https://peerj.com/articles/5953/
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Additional Information
Competing Interests
Kelly Jaakkola is an employee of Dolphin Research Center. Heather Hill collaborates on research with multiple marine mammal facilities, including SeaWorld, Shedd Aquarium, Georgia Aquarium, Houston Zoo.
Author Contributions
Heather M Manitzas Hill conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Kelly Jaakkola conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The raw data utilized for the correlations are available in the supplementary file. The raw data show evidence of an order effect.
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.
