Is Dolphin-Assisted Therapy Actually Therapy?
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Marc Bekoff, Psychology Today / Animal Emotions
January 2021

We showed that most “improvements” could not rule out the placebo and other nonspecific effects (construct validity) or there were too many weaknesses in the way the studies were conducted to draw sound conclusions (internal validity).

tMay Manzur, Unsplash.com

I recently read a thorough review about the effectiveness of Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT) by Lori Marino and the late Scott Lilienfeld, and was greatly impressed with the detailed analyses these experts conducted on a large number of studies on DAT. Marino and Lilienfeld concluded the DAT literature continues to be marked by several weaknesses in both internal and construct validity that preclude confident inferences regarding the intervention's efficacy and there is still insufficient evidence that DAT has therapeutic value.

I'm pleased to offer this guest essay by Lori Marino about this most important study.

 

Please read the ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE (PDF).

---

Return to Animal Rights Articles