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There are various standards used to identify breeds. Breeds that can be positively identified through pedigrees or genetic tests are a small number. A larger group includes those that are identified by their physical characteristics by people trained in the field. Obviously, there's some uncertainty in this. The group then expands to breeds identified by people without any expertise (the public, the media, etc.) which has a huge amount of error.
I've read other studies that have different sample sizes and tighter controls on "breed" and they came to similar conclusions.
It's an imperfect world, but the intent is that they control for many more factors, in an attempt to eliminate as much error as possible. Most statistical compilations don't make that attempt.
JR
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