dolphin-assisted therapy more flawed data and more flawed.pdfVIP

ANTHROZOÖS VOLUME 20, ISSUE 3 REPRINTS AVAILABLE PHOTOCOPYING © ISAZ 2007 PP 239 – 249 DIRECTLY FROM PERMITTED PRINTED IN THE UK THE PUBLISHERS BY LICENSE ONLY Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions * † Lori Marino and Scott O. Lilienfeld * Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program, Emory University, USA † Department of Psychology, Emory University, USA Address for correspondence: ABSTRACT Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT) is an increasingly popular choice Lori Marino, Neuroscience of treatment for illness and developmental disabilities by providing participants and Behavioral Biology Program, Emory University, with the opportunity to swim or interact with live captive dolphins. Two reviews 1462 Clifton Road, Suite 304, of DAT (Marino and Lilienfeld [1998] and Humphries [2003]) concluded that Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. there is no credible scientific evidence for the effectiveness of this intervention. E-mail: lmarino@ In this paper, we offer an update of the methodological status of DAT by re- viewing five peer-reviewed DAT studies published in the last eight years. We found that all five studies were methodologically flawed and plagued by sev- eral threats to both internal and construct validity. We conclude that nearly a decade following our initial review, there remains no compelling evidence that