• ImplyingImplications
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    5 hours ago

    There was a study done where police K9 units where told they’d be testing the accuracy of the dog’s ability to find drugs. In actually, they were testing the handlers. Handlers were told drugs were hidden in a certain location, but there wasn’t actually drugs there. Despite that, all their dogs alerted several times to the location the handlers were told about.

    • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I’ve looked at several of these studies today and they all prove without a doubt that handlers have an effect on their dogs’ behavior, but they don’t prove that the dogs don’t have the ability to detect what they say they can. That might become useless policy-wise if the police can nearly always cause the dog to alert, but science-wise it’s dishonest to say that the dogs can’t smell anything.