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If Dogs Can Smell Cancer, Why Don't They Screen People? (scientificamerican.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Scientific American report: Dogs can be trained to be cancer-sniffing wizards, using their sensitive noses to detect cancerous fumes wafting from diseased cells. This sniffing is noninvasive and could help diagnose countless people, which begs the question: If these pups are so olfactorily astute, why aren't they screening people for cancer right now? Here's the short answer: Dogs do well in engaging situations, such as helping law enforcement track scents or guiding search-and-rescue teams in disaster areas. But sniffing thousands of samples in which only a handful may be cancerous is challenging work with little positive reinforcement. Moreover, it takes time and energy to train these pups, who, despite extensive preparation, still might miss a diagnosis if they're having a bad day, experts told Live Science.
The same can be said for drugs and we still use dogs for that.
That's because it is a hard problem to solve and dogs are exquisitely evolved to detect scents. Learning to replicate even a fraction of that functionality will take many years of hard work. And yes, top people are working on it.
Bees are just as good as dogs at sniffing things, including drugs and explosives.
You train the hive ONCE, and they train each other after that.
Unlike dogs, they have much longer working rules. They don't need as much rest or reward.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/...
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This sniffing is noninvasive and could help diagnose countless people, which begs the question:
It raises the question. It does not beg the question.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If dogs are cancer-smelling machines, then every single dog in my local dog park must have cancer of the ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Dr: Please step right into this room full of adorable puppy dogs.
vs
Dr: Please step into this room FULL OF BEES.
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And humans of course have almost as good of a nose as a dog
Citation absolutely needed sir.
Not quite. I have two SAR (Search and Rescue) dogs, and they are able to able to smell things we just plain can't. One dog can cover a 40 acre plot of land and find every human within about a half hour. He's found a dozen people (live and dead), and in many cases, places where ground-pounders and police already cleared. Our other dog is a sent-specific trailing dog and will follow the scent that a human leave along a trail for miles.
In all cases, during training and live searches, the handler has no idea where the subjects are. There is no indication that they can follow -- they lead us.
So -- read up. Your tests are bull shit.