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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Are dogs unreliable? My highly trained Malinois is more reliable than most people.

Unreliable for use as medical sensors, at least that's what the study says. About your general sentiment: I am sorry that you feel you don't have reliable humans in your life.

Have you seen a highly trained Malinois? Even if you're surrounded by highly reliable humans, they're probably not as reliable as the dog.

It doesn't matter how well trained a dog is, a lot of people are scared of dogs.

A lot of people are scared of needles, too. And yet we still inject people all the time.

Because there are medications that "must" be administered intravenously or in the muscle. There's no test that can only be performed via canine.

Devil’s advocate: “yet”.

> There's no test that can only be performed via canine.

Because we haven't developed any.

Well yes, but clearly some tests dont't need to be performed with a needle anymore - we can use a dog

That's true, but it's not relevant here... we're talking about reliability.

Depends on how you define "reliable". I'm sure the Malinois can be relied upon to do the things it has been trained to do, but I can rely on humans to do things they have not been trained to do.

There are multiple linked studies, the first BMJ infection article at least seems to be positive in its conclusions about it.

("CONCLUSION: A trained dog was able to detect C difficile with high estimated sensitivity and specificity, both in stool samples and in hospital patients infected with C difficile.")

Counter argument: I've never seen any trained chihuahua. It seems that most if not all owners who want to own a chihuahua or another small "lap dog" are incapable of training them.

The sheer amount of untrained dogs is just way too high to use a trained dog as an argument. I'd guess less than 10% actually go to dog school/training.

This i tell my kids to not go near any dog they dont know, too many bad dog owners..

> The sheer amount of untrained dogs is just way too high to use a trained dog as an argument.

The sheer amount of stupid people is just way too high to use a smart person as an argument.

Have you never seen a 90s Taco Bell commercial?

No animal is 100% reliable (in the general sense, not the medical one like in the article).

Which is why a lot of the cute videos with dogs and children (especially babies) should actually not be encouraged, there's many accidents every year.

And now tell me please which doctor or test IS 100% reliable?

Highly trained is the operational word here, untrained Malinois are a nightmare. I agree with the above for most dogs, trained they are fine but most dogs are not trained and not very easy to control in unfamiliar surroundings.

Trained people are fine, but most people are not trained and not very easy to control in unfamiliar surroundings.

Haha. They're reliable as dogs, but perhaps less reliable as machines ;).

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