ArticleConservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology2019
A moral panic over cats.
Article in Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using applied social science disciplines to implement creative outdoor cat management solutions and avoid the trap of one-size-fits-all policies.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Calling a trade-off a trade-off in arguments for cat confinement.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Review
- Re-Thinking Felid-Human Entanglements through the Lenses of Compassionate Conservation and Multispecies Studies.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Guidance for management of free-roaming community cats: a bioeconomic analysis.Journal of feline medicine and surgery · 2022Article
- Estimating the Population of Unowned Free-Ranging Domestic Cats in Denmark Using a Combination of Questionnaires and GPS Tracking.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- How Serious Are Health-Related Welfare Problems in Unowned Unsocialised Domestic Cats? A Study from Denmark Based on 598 Necropsies.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Compassionate Conservation is indistinguishable from traditional forms of conservation in practice.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Outdoor domestic cats and wildlife: How to overrate and misinterpret field data.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Article
- Unanswered Questions and Hypotheses about Domestic Cat Behavior, Ecology, and the Cat-Human Relationship.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Perspectives of Canadian and American Cat Owners on Provision of Uncontrolled Outdoor Access for Owned Domestic Cats.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2021Article
- Coping With Human-Cat Interactions Beyond the Limits of Domesticity: Moral Pluralism in the Management of Cats and Wildlife.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2021Review
- I Am a Compassionate Conservation Welfare Scientist: Considering the Theoretical and Practical Differences Between Compassionate Conservation and Conservation Welfare.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Reply to Crawford et al.: Why Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) Is an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat Management.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Article
- Change the Humans First: Principles for Improving the Management of Free-Roaming Cats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some conservationists believe that free-ranging cats pose an enormous risk to biodiversity and public health and therefore should be eliminated from the landscape by any means necessary. They further claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. As much as we share a commitment to conservation of biodiversity and wild nature, we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic over cats. Those who question the ecological or epidemiological status of cats are not science deniers, and it is a false analogy to compare them with corporate and right-wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change. There are good conservation and public-health reasons and evidence to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster for biodiversity and human health in all circumstances. Further, there are significant and largely unaddressed ethical and policy issues (e.g., the ethics and efficacy of lethal management) relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife. Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free-ranging cats.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.