Originally Posted by
gobluetwo
And what happens on false positives, or when dogs alert on out of scope items (eg, drugs or a giant stack of cash)?
What if they alarm because they
sense the handler is suspicious of you? According to this story a negative reaction is almost always an accurate one. A positive reaction by the dog may not be.
In order to pass the test, the handlers and their dogs had to go through the room and detect nothing.
But of 144 runs, that happened only 21 times, for a failure rate of 85 percent.
Although drug-sniffing dogs are supposed to find drugs on their own, the researchers concluded that they were influenced by their handlers, and that's what led to such a high failure rate.
Source: Legal challenge questions reliability of police dogs, By Lawrence Mower AND Brian Haynes, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, Posted: Jul. 9, 2012