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Comment by summm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.")

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.

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