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I've always found that study somewhat questionable, because its a test on the handlers. In a situation constructed so there is no positive sign. It's not exactly some staggering finding that if you tell someone you are giving them a test, and then every answer is False, they are going to change a maybe false guess to true because "they can't all be false right?"
Read the wording of it: It's not an objective the dog Barked/Satdown/whined here, its 'the handler says the dog alerted'.
It's a study on taking tests, or the honest of cops, that just happens to have drug dogs involved.
If you ever think "they can't all be false", you need to be checked for terminal gooseness. The fact that they were all false is why the test works.
Which is why I say time and time again police need civilian oversight and those who resist should be taken out behind their precincts and be forcefully reeducated.
When they tried that in NYC, the police literally rioted. It was one of the events that helped usher in Giuliani and Bloomberg. The recent election leaves me hopeful, though - Lhota tried the same scaremongering, and got his ass royally kicked.
NYC (and Boston and probably LA) cops have a special sense of entitlement. Boston just elected a guy who will make sure to expand the sphere of their entitlement since, you know, they're local heroes etc. I'd like to see deblasio install some dreaded oversight of their operations. god knows walsh isn't going to.
the problem with police is not (for the most part) that their legal powers are too broad. the problem with police is that they don't operate with meaningful oversight or accountability.
I'm saying that bomb / drug dogs aren't useless 'divining rods' as Ender put it in all cases.
No, they really are. If I gave you a smartphone app where you pressed a button on the screen and it always said, "DRUGS PRESENT," it would be as useful as calling a dog to a scene. You wouldn't get any false negatives with such an app either (and, incidentally, diving rods have next to no false negative rate).
If you always think there's drugs, you'll be right every time drugs are present and wrong every time they aren't. That doesn't make you a worthwhile mechanism for finding drugs.
If you have a double blind study that demonstrates a dog can find drugs / explosives reliably, without simply barking at everything all of the time, I'm all eyes.
'double blind study' like one where the researcher enters the room and places flags to manipulate the test subject? I mean that's literally the researcher going 'psst this is the real stuff'(even if its not true).
'If I tell someone to see if they can spot a concealed weapon, some people will say they see one even if there aren't any' Clearly our eyes are just dowsing rods.
That we use dogs in situations where there's no need to generate probable cause(ie customs) is all you really need to show they are effective. A Customs agent literally needs no cause to detain you and search all your stuff.
+3
Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratorMod Emeritus
Where is any legitimate news source talking about this gross violation of human rights? Like, this strikes me as something MSNBC, The New York Times.... fuck, even local television would be talking about.
It happened to a man. Society doesn't care. Wait until this happens to a woman, and the RAPE headlines will rain down from all MSM.
There's actually a 'fun' game you can play with these kinds of stories: figure out what would have to change in the storyline for a given mainstream outlet to write about it.
For this to be on MSNBC, the victim would have to be a non-obese woman under 35, with enough education to sound good on camera. She'd have to be willing to get up in front of millions of people and talk about her violation. Then it's a "war on women" story with some police brutality thrown in. The story would connect the event to corruption at the local police department, and imply that we need more federal or state oversight.
For this to be on Fox, the victim would have to stay male, and one of the cops would have to be gay. They'd focus on the government corruption with some comments about how "the gays are taking over", and they'd make sure to link the event as much as possible to the federal government. Anal probes by the gay police? Welcome to Obama's America.
For this to be on CNN, a cat or a teenager would have to have been shot at some point. Also it needs a chase scene, or something falling over.
And so on. Isn't the mainstream media great?
nope
it would have to be federal police and they'd have to be searching the dudes ass for guns, not drugs
I've always found that study somewhat questionable, because its a test on the handlers. In a situation constructed so there is no positive sign. It's not exactly some staggering finding that if you tell someone you are giving them a test, and then every answer is False, they are going to change a maybe false guess to true because "they can't all be false right?"
Read the wording of it: It's not an objective the dog Barked/Satdown/whined here, its 'the handler says the dog alerted'.
It's a study on taking tests, or the honest of cops, that just happens to have drug dogs involved.
If the test had included rooms with actual bombs/drugs, you know what any outside observer would have said? "Well, the success rate isn't THAT bad, at least they got [x] right!", just like @zagrob is doing now. Because the dogs always bark.
It is an awful, horrendous, terrible rate of non-success. A donut - zero percent success.
It's this simple: if the dogs were really a mechanism for finding drugs/explosives, they wouldn't have barked at all in that church. But they all barked, and they barked in every single room, because here or there the handler signaled them to do so (subconsciously or not). They're the equivalent of dousing rods.
Shit like this is the very same reason people bought into the ADE 651, which was just a plastic handle grip with a swiveling antennae attached.
I'm saying that bomb / drug dogs aren't useless 'divining rods' as Ender put it in all cases.
No, they really are. If I gave you a smartphone app where you pressed a button on the screen and it always said, "DRUGS PRESENT," it would be as useful as calling a dog to a scene. You wouldn't get any false negatives with such an app either (and, incidentally, diving rods have next to no false negative rate).
If you always think there's drugs, you'll be right every time drugs are present and wrong every time they aren't. That doesn't make you a worthwhile mechanism for finding drugs.
If you have a double blind study that demonstrates a dog can find drugs / explosives reliably, without simply barking at everything all of the time, I'm all eyes.
'double blind study' like one where the researcher enters the room and places flags to manipulate the test subject? I mean that's literally the researcher going 'psst this is the real stuff'(even if its not true).
'If I tell someone to see if they can spot a concealed weapon, some people will say they see one even if there aren't any' Clearly our eyes are just dowsing rods.
That we use dogs in situations where there's no need to generate probable cause(ie customs) is all you really need to show they are effective. A Customs agent literally needs no cause to detain you and search all your stuff.
Yes, that is the whole point of the test - the dog shouldn't react to a false positive, especially one triggering on the handler.
I'm saying that bomb / drug dogs aren't useless 'divining rods' as Ender put it in all cases.
No, they really are. If I gave you a smartphone app where you pressed a button on the screen and it always said, "DRUGS PRESENT," it would be as useful as calling a dog to a scene. You wouldn't get any false negatives with such an app either (and, incidentally, diving rods have next to no false negative rate).
If you always think there's drugs, you'll be right every time drugs are present and wrong every time they aren't. That doesn't make you a worthwhile mechanism for finding drugs.
If you have a double blind study that demonstrates a dog can find drugs / explosives reliably, without simply barking at everything all of the time, I'm all eyes.
'double blind study' like one where the researcher enters the room and places flags to manipulate the test subject? I mean that's literally the researcher going 'psst this is the real stuff'(even if its not true).
'If I tell someone to see if they can spot a concealed weapon, some people will say they see one even if there aren't any' Clearly our eyes are just dowsing rods.
That we use dogs in situations where there's no need to generate probable cause(ie customs) is all you really need to show they are effective. A Customs agent literally needs no cause to detain you and search all your stuff.
I've always found that study somewhat questionable, because its a test on the handlers. In a situation constructed so there is no positive sign. It's not exactly some staggering finding that if you tell someone you are giving them a test, and then every answer is False, they are going to change a maybe false guess to true because "they can't all be false right?"
Read the wording of it: It's not an objective the dog Barked/Satdown/whined here, its 'the handler says the dog alerted'.
It's a study on taking tests, or the honest of cops, that just happens to have drug dogs involved.
If you ever think "they can't all be false", you need to be checked for terminal gooseness. The fact that they were all false is why the test works.
No, that they are all false is why the test got the result it was looking to get.
If there were a couple of items for the dogs to actually find, the handlers might have not reported something they thought was marginal as a 'hit'.
The test isn't about the dogs, it's a manipulative psych test on the handlers.
I've always found that study somewhat questionable, because its a test on the handlers. In a situation constructed so there is no positive sign. It's not exactly some staggering finding that if you tell someone you are giving them a test, and then every answer is False, they are going to change a maybe false guess to true because "they can't all be false right?"
Read the wording of it: It's not an objective the dog Barked/Satdown/whined here, its 'the handler says the dog alerted'.
It's a study on taking tests, or the honest of cops, that just happens to have drug dogs involved.
If you ever think "they can't all be false", you need to be checked for terminal gooseness. The fact that they were all false is why the test works.
No, that they are all false is why the test got the result it was looking to get.
If there were a couple of items for the dogs to actually find, the handlers might have not reported something they thought was marginal as a 'hit'.
'double blind study' like one where the researcher enters the room and places flags to manipulate the test subject? I mean that's literally the researcher going 'psst this is the real stuff'(even if its not true).
Yes, that is exactly what a double blind test is.
EDIT: Or, I should say, exactly what such a test involves.
Tinwhiskers, what do you think those handlers are going to do in a real life situation? "Hmm, there must be drugs here, otherwise they wouldn't have called me. Gotta find them."
I'm saying that bomb / drug dogs aren't useless 'divining rods' as Ender put it in all cases.
No, they really are. If I gave you a smartphone app where you pressed a button on the screen and it always said, "DRUGS PRESENT," it would be as useful as calling a dog to a scene. You wouldn't get any false negatives with such an app either (and, incidentally, diving rods have next to no false negative rate).
If you always think there's drugs, you'll be right every time drugs are present and wrong every time they aren't. That doesn't make you a worthwhile mechanism for finding drugs.
If you have a double blind study that demonstrates a dog can find drugs / explosives reliably, without simply barking at everything all of the time, I'm all eyes.
Dear 3rd grade reader:
"There were alerts in all rooms" does not mean "Every dog alerted in all rooms"
I'm saying that bomb / drug dogs aren't useless 'divining rods' as Ender put it in all cases.
No, they really are. If I gave you a smartphone app where you pressed a button on the screen and it always said, "DRUGS PRESENT," it would be as useful as calling a dog to a scene. You wouldn't get any false negatives with such an app either (and, incidentally, diving rods have next to no false negative rate).
If you always think there's drugs, you'll be right every time drugs are present and wrong every time they aren't. That doesn't make you a worthwhile mechanism for finding drugs.
If you have a double blind study that demonstrates a dog can find drugs / explosives reliably, without simply barking at everything all of the time, I'm all eyes.
Dear 3rd grade reader:
"There were alerts in all rooms" does not mean "Every dog alerted in all rooms"
Dear silly goose:
Put up or shut up.
Where is the empirical evidence that dogs can be trained into effective instruments for finding drugs/explosives?
I've always found that study somewhat questionable, because its a test on the handlers. In a situation constructed so there is no positive sign. It's not exactly some staggering finding that if you tell someone you are giving them a test, and then every answer is False, they are going to change a maybe false guess to true because "they can't all be false right?"
Read the wording of it: It's not an objective the dog Barked/Satdown/whined here, its 'the handler says the dog alerted'.
It's a study on taking tests, or the honest of cops, that just happens to have drug dogs involved.
If you ever think "they can't all be false", you need to be checked for terminal gooseness. The fact that they were all false is why the test works.
No, that they are all false is why the test got the result it was looking to get.
If there were a couple of items for the dogs to actually find, the handlers might have not reported something they thought was marginal as a 'hit'.
The test isn't about the dogs, it's a manipulative psych test on the handlers.
No, it's a test to show that the detection isn't going off what it solely should be going off of.
"The stars weren't properly in alignment! You rigged the test! The plastic of the pipes blocked the water's energy! That's why I couldn't divine which piece of plumbing had the water running through it,"
The idea is that the researchers would tell the cops to look for materials which may set the dogs off. The fact that the cops made an assumption that something was there and the dogs triggered off of that is the entire point of the study. The police assumed that there would be something somewhere, even though a church isn't a likely place to contain those materials. The fact that the cops knew they were looking for shit meant they felt like a signal was warranted, and so it was.
Hey @tinwhiskers , I guess it must also be a flawed methodology to give someone a placebo and tell them it's really a drug in order to test what the efficacy of the actual drug is?
The scientific foundation and efficacy of the use of canines as chemical detectors for explosives
Abstract
This article reviews the use of dogs as chemical detectors, and the scientific foundation and available information on the reliability of explosive detector dogs, including a comparison with analytical instrumental techniques. Compositions of common military and industrial explosives are described, including relative vapor pressures of common explosives and constituent odor signature chemicals. Examples of active volatile odor signature chemicals from parent explosive chemicals are discussed as well as the need for additional studies. The specific example of odor chemicals from the high explosive composition C-4 studied by solid phase microextraction indicates that the volatile odor chemicals 2-ethyl-1-hexanol and cyclohexanone are available in the headspace; whereas, the active chemical cyclo-1,3,5-trimethylene-2,4,6-trinitramine (RDX) is not. A detailed comparison between instrumental detection methods and detector dogs shows aspects for which instrumental methods have advantages, a comparable number of aspects for which detector dogs have advantages, as well as additional aspects where there are no clear advantages. Overall, detector dogs still represent the fastest, most versatile, reliable real-time explosive detection device available. Instrumental methods, while they continue to improve, generally suffer from a lack of efficient sampling systems, selectivity problems in the presence of interfering odor chemicals and limited mobility/tracking ability.
I'm aware of that article; it describes the olfactory capabilities of dogs and the mechanism by which they can identify explosives (and, well, most things). All very impressive, and none of that is disputed by me or anyone else.
The question remains, "How good is a dog in the field at actually finding these things?" and, in double blind trials, they fail to discern between bombs and colored pieces of cardboard.
Additionally, that article is from 2001. Technology marches on. I'm assuming we have been working on better detection devices in the meantime, but the police will always advocate the use of dogs since you can't train an objective device to signal on command.
I'm aware of that article; it describes the olfactory capabilities of dogs and the mechanism by which they can identify explosives (and, well, most things). All very impressive, and none of that is disputed by me or anyone else.
The question remains, "How good is a dog in the field at actually finding these things?" and, in double blind trials, they fail to discern between bombs and colored pieces of cardboard.
That trial wasn't testing the efficacy of dogs as drug sniffers, it was testing whether or not the dogs and trainer teams were clever-hans'd to hell and back. Which they are.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Also, frankly, we scrutinize devices more rigorously than we scrutinize dogs. If I had invented a detection device with a siren that you had taken into the same church and it had gone off without any bombs present, you'd have called the device a piece of shit and thrown it away (and rightly so). But we've become so accustomed to the idea that dogs are these infallible sniffing machines that when they fail, we reach for excuses.
Additionally, that article is from 2001. Technology marches on. I'm assuming we have been working on better detection devices in the meantime, but the police will always advocate the use of dogs since you can't train an objective device to signal on command.
Additionally, that article is from 2001. Technology marches on. I'm assuming we have been working on better detection devices in the meantime, but the police will always advocate the use of dogs since you can't train an objective device to signal on command.
I am not arguing that dogs aren't useful when we know bombs are around. I'm arguing that using them to establish the presence of a bomb is hilariously flawed as a premise. Using them as probable cause to give a guy three enemas and a colonoscopy is just ridiculous.
DEAR GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT DOUBLE BLIND EXPERIMENTS TO FIND DRUGS IN YOUR BUTTHOLE OR WHATEVER THE HELL
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There needs to be some serious repercussions for things like this. The part where they bill him for it is especially nice. That's beyond gross incompetence and violation of someones rights and goes right into the weirdly stupid territory. Well, we didn't find what we asked for so we're not paying for it.
I remember watching a documentary about Russian sniffer dogs, that have been bred over decades to become the ideal dog to work at terminals. Best in the world (according the the documentary), they are a mix of dog breeds crossbred with jackals, which apparently have a very good sense of smell. But what stood out about that, to me, was that it got rid of the desperately eager to please part of the dog psyche. Those dogs (lean build, medium sized) work independently off leash, aren't told to stop and check stuff but instead just climb around like a bunch of monkeys playing a game of find the banana with their handlers jogging behind them trying to keep up. Not ideal to just take with you on patrol, of course, but for finding the shit out of drugs and bombs they can't be beat.
Would be great if the US got their own breeding program started. But getting a macho culture, like the k9 units seem to be, to admit something needs to change is probably going to be an uphill battle. Plus I'm sure they are quite happy with being able to do a search whenever they want. But hopefully someone will take the challenge of breeding the most accurate badass nose.
Additionally, that article is from 2001. Technology marches on. I'm assuming we have been working on better detection devices in the meantime, but the police will always advocate the use of dogs since you can't train an objective device to signal on command.
I am not arguing that dogs aren't useful when we know bombs are around. I'm arguing that using them to establish the presence of a bomb is hilariously flawed as a premise. Using them as probable cause to give a guy three enemas and a colonoscopy is just ridiculous.
I haven't seen anyone in this thread argue for what you are arguing against. In fact, tinwhiskers has expressed the exact sentiment that you just did. The Ender is trying to claim that "drug dogs" are just dogs that bark when their handlers tell them to and serve no useful purpose at all.
I think some people get caught up in their pet causes a bit too much sometimes, either that or they just like to argue (which I can be guilty of at times), so a lot of people are just talking past each other.
On the main topic - this is horrifying and I really wish we had better systems in place to prevent abuse like this from happening in the first place, or failing that, that there would be actual consequences for the perpetrators and compensation for the victim.
This is a little subjective but from a statistical standpoint, for things like drugs and bombs, we as a society tend to consider test with calculated percentage of false positives(Type 1 error, alpha) to be superior to a tests that conversely deliver the same percentage of false negatives(Type II error, beta). We refer to this as sensitivity (how well can the test detect persons who really have the event?) and specificity (how well can the test exclude persons without the event?).
From a consequence standpoint we can examine this from several perspectives
Health perspective
1a. A health test that fails to identify an abnormality in seemingly healthy person
-no further tests are done and condition deteriorates
1b. A health test falsely identifies an abnormality in an healthy person
-further tests are run, increasing the likelihood that the correct outcome will be observed.
Drug/Bomb Dog
2a. A bomb dog fails to identify a bomb being carried
-person's chances of successfully setting off bomb increases
2b. A bomb dog incorrectly identifies a bomb on a person who is not carrying a bomb
-person is searched and no bomb is discovered
We measure specificity = true negatives / (true negatives + false positives)
Sensitivity = true positive/ (true positive + false negative)
We operate under the assumption that the event is relatively rare, ie most people screened will not be carrying a bomb.
Medical tests are better about recognizing that tests with high predictive values will need to be able to effectively sort false positives, as false positives are an unnecessary burden on the system. Therefore med tests are often willing to sacrifice sensitivity in one test with the assumption that health deterioration of the patient will eventually necessitate any additional tests required.
However, when we look at incidents of terrorists and the general government and social reaction, it's obvious society is willing to utilize tests with low specificity and high false positives in order to ensure sensitivity is as high as possible and no false negatives occur.
the problem with police is not (for the most part) that their legal powers are too broad. the problem with police is that they don't operate with meaningful oversight or accountability.
To get back to it, this is what I was getting at earlier with "you won't win an argument with the cops" being a feature, and not a bug. In general, cops need the last word at the scene in order to effectively execute their duties. We routinely ask police to step into volatile or dangerous situations, and at least in some temporary sense resolve them. They can't really do that if every kid who's been to wikipedia decides to play shithouse lawyer with them every time they try to step in and keep the peace. That's why in many jurisdictions, perhaps most, merely interfering with an officer who is executing their duties can be a crime.
Or, put another way, you argue your ticket in court, not at the side of the road.
But I think most of us are painfully aware of how stories like the OP tend to end. The officer will, if anything, get some paid vacation time and perhaps some training. Handing officers this much power is extremely dangerous if we don't also come back on them when they misuse it...even if that misuse is unintentional.
It's a simple issue to fix, conceptually. The problem is that practically, it won't get fixed without some serious political drive and/or enforcement.
-Police need to have authority.
-They also need to suffer for misusing that authority. This includes any violation of civil rights, crimes, etc.
-There needs to be oversight, and proper sentencing and prosecution of crimes performed by the police, as well as actual consequences for breaking the public trust and violations of law and abuse of the power their station bestows them.
I believe we've had these(and other, related) points discussed several times in various [Cops Gone Wild]-threads, and it tends to always descend into the same arguments. I'd personally say that having officers carry cameras/mics that they are not allowed to turn off, or "lose" the recordings for without severe penalties would help in curtailing undesirable behavior. This evidence should then be used to properly judge any cases, and if caught on a lie, the officers should suffer further penalties on top of whatever else is relevant.
the problem with police is not (for the most part) that their legal powers are too broad. the problem with police is that they don't operate with meaningful oversight or accountability.
To get back to it, this is what I was getting at earlier with "you won't win an argument with the cops" being a feature, and not a bug. In general, cops need the last word at the scene in order to effectively execute their duties. We routinely ask police to step into volatile or dangerous situations, and at least in some temporary sense resolve them. They can't really do that if every kid who's been to wikipedia decides to play shithouse lawyer with them every time they try to step in and keep the peace. That's why in many jurisdictions, perhaps most, merely interfering with an officer who is executing their duties can be a crime.
Or, put another way, you argue your ticket in court, not at the side of the road.
But I think most of us are painfully aware of how stories like the OP tend to end. The officer will, if anything, get some paid vacation time and perhaps some training. Handing officers this much power is extremely dangerous if we don't also come back on them when they misuse it...even if that misuse is unintentional.
It's a simple issue to fix, conceptually. The problem is that practically, it won't get fixed without some serious political drive and/or enforcement.
-Police need to have authority.
-They also need to suffer for misusing that authority. This includes any violation of civil rights, crimes, etc.
-There needs to be oversight, and proper sentencing and prosecution of crimes performed by the police, as well as actual consequences for breaking the public trust and violations of law and abuse of the power their station bestows them.
I believe we've had these(and other, related) points discussed several times in various [Cops Gone Wild]-threads, and it tends to always descend into the same arguments. I'd personally say that having officers carry cameras/mics that they are not allowed to turn off, or "lose" the recordings for without severe penalties would help in curtailing undesirable behavior. This evidence should then be used to properly judge any cases, and if caught on a lie, the officers should suffer further penalties on top of whatever else is relevant.
It would be a okay, if minor step, in the right direction if
1. The Cameras uploaded instantly and wirelessly to a server.
2. The server was not under control of the police
3. The server required a warrant to access to avoid violation of privacy issues like a cop wanting to upload his video to youtube of a suspect with pants down around his ankles
4. that it was a felony for anyone (Even the police or government employees) to access the server without the warrant
5. The server isn't connected to the internet, which would require developing a way to connect to it for the wireless upload I know.
Catching up with the thread and I was wondering about the whole "no winning an argument with a cop" part.
Is there a legal limit to that if they are doing something obviously illegal or is it just make sure he doesn't hurt his hands while he is beating on your face? Or to put it better is it ever legal to use violence to protect yourself from the illegal actions of the police?
0
Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Catching up with the thread and I was wondering about the whole "no winning an argument with a cop" part.
Is there a legal limit to that if they are doing something obviously illegal or is it just make sure he doesn't hurt his hands while he is beating on your face? Or to put it better is it ever legal to use violence to protect yourself from the illegal actions of the police?
Even if you are in the right, you are in the wrong. Also look forward to constant police harassment until you move.
Posts
If you ever think "they can't all be false", you need to be checked for terminal gooseness. The fact that they were all false is why the test works.
NYC (and Boston and probably LA) cops have a special sense of entitlement. Boston just elected a guy who will make sure to expand the sphere of their entitlement since, you know, they're local heroes etc. I'd like to see deblasio install some dreaded oversight of their operations. god knows walsh isn't going to.
the problem with police is not (for the most part) that their legal powers are too broad. the problem with police is that they don't operate with meaningful oversight or accountability.
'double blind study' like one where the researcher enters the room and places flags to manipulate the test subject? I mean that's literally the researcher going 'psst this is the real stuff'(even if its not true).
'If I tell someone to see if they can spot a concealed weapon, some people will say they see one even if there aren't any' Clearly our eyes are just dowsing rods.
That we use dogs in situations where there's no need to generate probable cause(ie customs) is all you really need to show they are effective. A Customs agent literally needs no cause to detain you and search all your stuff.
nope
it would have to be federal police and they'd have to be searching the dudes ass for guns, not drugs
If the test had included rooms with actual bombs/drugs, you know what any outside observer would have said? "Well, the success rate isn't THAT bad, at least they got [x] right!", just like @zagrob is doing now. Because the dogs always bark.
It is an awful, horrendous, terrible rate of non-success. A donut - zero percent success.
It's this simple: if the dogs were really a mechanism for finding drugs/explosives, they wouldn't have barked at all in that church. But they all barked, and they barked in every single room, because here or there the handler signaled them to do so (subconsciously or not). They're the equivalent of dousing rods.
Shit like this is the very same reason people bought into the ADE 651, which was just a plastic handle grip with a swiveling antennae attached.
Yes, that is the whole point of the test - the dog shouldn't react to a false positive, especially one triggering on the handler.
You have no idea how studies work, do you
No, that they are all false is why the test got the result it was looking to get.
If there were a couple of items for the dogs to actually find, the handlers might have not reported something they thought was marginal as a 'hit'.
The test isn't about the dogs, it's a manipulative psych test on the handlers.
Yes, that is exactly what a double blind test is.
EDIT: Or, I should say, exactly what such a test involves.
Dear 3rd grade reader:
"There were alerts in all rooms" does not mean "Every dog alerted in all rooms"
Dear silly goose:
Put up or shut up.
Where is the empirical evidence that dogs can be trained into effective instruments for finding drugs/explosives?
No, it's a test to show that the detection isn't going off what it solely should be going off of.
Apparently this researcher didn't have friends in the same Confirmation Retreats I did.
You totally missed the point.
They didn't want to pick a location where what the researchers would have thought was a negative was actually a potential positive.
The scientific foundation and efficacy of the use of canines as chemical detectors for explosives
The question remains, "How good is a dog in the field at actually finding these things?" and, in double blind trials, they fail to discern between bombs and colored pieces of cardboard.
That trial wasn't testing the efficacy of dogs as drug sniffers, it was testing whether or not the dogs and trainer teams were clever-hans'd to hell and back. Which they are.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
While looking for that:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/19-billion-later-pentagon-best-bomb-detector-is-a-dog/
Tax dollars at work
I am not arguing that dogs aren't useful when we know bombs are around. I'm arguing that using them to establish the presence of a bomb is hilariously flawed as a premise. Using them as probable cause to give a guy three enemas and a colonoscopy is just ridiculous.
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I remember watching a documentary about Russian sniffer dogs, that have been bred over decades to become the ideal dog to work at terminals. Best in the world (according the the documentary), they are a mix of dog breeds crossbred with jackals, which apparently have a very good sense of smell. But what stood out about that, to me, was that it got rid of the desperately eager to please part of the dog psyche. Those dogs (lean build, medium sized) work independently off leash, aren't told to stop and check stuff but instead just climb around like a bunch of monkeys playing a game of find the banana with their handlers jogging behind them trying to keep up. Not ideal to just take with you on patrol, of course, but for finding the shit out of drugs and bombs they can't be beat.
Would be great if the US got their own breeding program started. But getting a macho culture, like the k9 units seem to be, to admit something needs to change is probably going to be an uphill battle. Plus I'm sure they are quite happy with being able to do a search whenever they want. But hopefully someone will take the challenge of breeding the most accurate badass nose.
I haven't seen anyone in this thread argue for what you are arguing against. In fact, tinwhiskers has expressed the exact sentiment that you just did. The Ender is trying to claim that "drug dogs" are just dogs that bark when their handlers tell them to and serve no useful purpose at all.
I think some people get caught up in their pet causes a bit too much sometimes, either that or they just like to argue (which I can be guilty of at times), so a lot of people are just talking past each other.
On the main topic - this is horrifying and I really wish we had better systems in place to prevent abuse like this from happening in the first place, or failing that, that there would be actual consequences for the perpetrators and compensation for the victim.
From a consequence standpoint we can examine this from several perspectives
Health perspective
1a. A health test that fails to identify an abnormality in seemingly healthy person
-no further tests are done and condition deteriorates
1b. A health test falsely identifies an abnormality in an healthy person
-further tests are run, increasing the likelihood that the correct outcome will be observed.
Drug/Bomb Dog
2a. A bomb dog fails to identify a bomb being carried
-person's chances of successfully setting off bomb increases
2b. A bomb dog incorrectly identifies a bomb on a person who is not carrying a bomb
-person is searched and no bomb is discovered
We measure specificity = true negatives / (true negatives + false positives)
Sensitivity = true positive/ (true positive + false negative)
We operate under the assumption that the event is relatively rare, ie most people screened will not be carrying a bomb.
Medical tests are better about recognizing that tests with high predictive values will need to be able to effectively sort false positives, as false positives are an unnecessary burden on the system. Therefore med tests are often willing to sacrifice sensitivity in one test with the assumption that health deterioration of the patient will eventually necessitate any additional tests required.
However, when we look at incidents of terrorists and the general government and social reaction, it's obvious society is willing to utilize tests with low specificity and high false positives in order to ensure sensitivity is as high as possible and no false negatives occur.
It's a simple issue to fix, conceptually. The problem is that practically, it won't get fixed without some serious political drive and/or enforcement.
-Police need to have authority.
-They also need to suffer for misusing that authority. This includes any violation of civil rights, crimes, etc.
-There needs to be oversight, and proper sentencing and prosecution of crimes performed by the police, as well as actual consequences for breaking the public trust and violations of law and abuse of the power their station bestows them.
I believe we've had these(and other, related) points discussed several times in various [Cops Gone Wild]-threads, and it tends to always descend into the same arguments. I'd personally say that having officers carry cameras/mics that they are not allowed to turn off, or "lose" the recordings for without severe penalties would help in curtailing undesirable behavior. This evidence should then be used to properly judge any cases, and if caught on a lie, the officers should suffer further penalties on top of whatever else is relevant.
It would be a okay, if minor step, in the right direction if
1. The Cameras uploaded instantly and wirelessly to a server.
2. The server was not under control of the police
3. The server required a warrant to access to avoid violation of privacy issues like a cop wanting to upload his video to youtube of a suspect with pants down around his ankles
4. that it was a felony for anyone (Even the police or government employees) to access the server without the warrant
5. The server isn't connected to the internet, which would require developing a way to connect to it for the wireless upload I know.
Catching up with the thread and I was wondering about the whole "no winning an argument with a cop" part.
Is there a legal limit to that if they are doing something obviously illegal or is it just make sure he doesn't hurt his hands while he is beating on your face? Or to put it better is it ever legal to use violence to protect yourself from the illegal actions of the police?
gonna need a major clarification here.
Even if you are in the right, you are in the wrong. Also look forward to constant police harassment until you move.