Background: In 2009 Professor Alexandra Horowitz published Inside of a Dog, which explored a lot of the scientific understanding of how dogs think and relate to us. Since then she has continued to research and publish in this field, and her faculty bio at Barnard College in Columbia University indicates that she still teaches “Canine Cognition.”
I just watched Netflix’s new release, “Inside the Mind of a Dog.” I was excited when I saw it, because I really enjoyed the book and the nearly identical title led me to assume Horowitz would be involved if not interviewed. But although the movie explores the same subject matter, she is never even mentioned—which would maybe make sense to me if they didn’t use a nearly identical title for the movie.
The movie itself interviews plenty of other experts and authors in the field, so it isn’t as if there aren’t independent sources for the movie’s content. But at the same time it seems implausible that Horowitz’s book wouldn’t show up in the course of researching a movie like this, so I have a hard time thinking this could be a coincidence.
Mostly I’m just interested in getting other people’s reactions, but if there are other instances of Netflix docs with heavy similarities to uncredited books that would also stand out to me.
Writing a book on a knowledge topic doesn’t mean that you own that knowledge topic and nobody else can publish on that topic without your permission.
If Netflix just copied the information and structure from the book then there may be a plagiarism issue but from what you describe they have done their own research.
This new documentary really didn’t do anything to dive into a dog’s mind and barely felt scientific (more like an advertisement for a dog training school), so I doubt it was plagiarized from anything that actually studied how a dog’s mind works.
Wondering the same about this. I actually worked for her in college and know how knowledgeable she is about all this, just seems so strange that it is almost the same title. Plus her specialty is olfaction so I would assume she would want to be involved if she had the option…
I feel like there are far more cognition studies on Dogs than most people realize. With a field so large internationally I think its unfair to labor anyone as the “Leader”, “The Expert”, "The Original. When I change my VPN location and search the expert in canine cognition research I get different names depending on the region or country. I found this interesting article talking about the prevalence and growth of the field. canine studies
Not trying to dismiss the apparent laziness and misleading title. But I think its a little dismissive of other experts.