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Czech trainers teach dogs to sniff out Covid: 95-percent success rate
- johnchristopher 6y ago> Vlachova said the Czechs would like to work together with the Finns or with French and German teams working on similar projects. > Unlike their western peers, the Czech team works in its free time and relies on scant financial means provided by a local dog food maker. This is the kind of cooperation where Europe could really shine. It's not big pharma or financial money abstraction, it's something people can relate to.
- supernova87a 6y agoIt would be nice if reporters were required by law to define exactly the numbers behind statements like "95% success rate". Under penalty of being sent to live on an iceberg for violating it.
- Spivak 6y agoWhy hold the reporters to that standard? They are just regurgitating a press briefing that came across their desk or outlining an interview with someone from the project. I don’t where everyone gets this idealistic reporter archetype. Unless you’re a super famous investigative journalist with the clout to get funding to fuck about for months/years for a story you’re basically a glorified copywriter.
- andrewflnr 6y agoWe can read press briefings ourselves. The only reason for reporters to exist is to dig at least a little bit deeper for truth. We've all heard about the economics of journalism, we just don't think it's acceptable.
- coliveira 6y agoSorry, but I don't think you're paying enough to deserve someone to spend the time digging for deeper truth. That's the sad reality of modern journalism in a capitalist country.
- xiphias2 6y agoI think the bigger problem is that it's too easy to copy after somebody has done the digging work, so journalists are not incentivized anymore. I tried to pay for journalism, but usually I get lower quality material than what I can read in HN comments for free.
- virgilp 6y ago> They are just regurgitating a press briefing that came across their desk I would argue that's one of the problems. It's easy to just regurgitate press briefing, but that's _not_ what their job should be. I'd argue they could at the very least impose some form standards (don't publish "x% success", ask for exact metrics before publishing the press briefing). Asking them to vet that the study methodology was sane is too much - but asking them to use specificity & sensitivity instead of "success percent" isn't too much to ask.
- coliveira 6y agowhy do your think this the the work of a journalist? If this is important, then we should have some regulation saying how companies need to report experiments.
- virgilp 6y agowell, for starters, it's published on france24.com, that's a pretty good hint that it is the work of a journalist. I believe one shouldn't regulate _all speech_ (e.g. company press releases, or scientific publications); but I think it's fair to regulate reporting, to some extent. And you can even have a somewhat wide definition of "reporting" (e.g. if you collect audience size metrics (e.g. in order to get revenue from advertising), and your audience is greater than X, then you are reporting).
- nanis 6y agoIt is the job of the journalist to at least be able to ask "what do you mean by 95% accuracy?" and to publish the answer given or the fact that no satisfactory answer is given because the reader is not in a position to be able to ask that question to the entity whose results are being publicized.
- supernova87a 6y agoThe number is the story. So reporters are just PR agents? Just cc everyone on the press release and forward misinformation because they can't understand it? Just fill those column-inches? We've got a paper to put out, doesn't matter if it's true. Sell those ads!
- the_duke 6y agoThe whole point of journalism is to filter information by relevance or value, validate it for accuracy, and present it to the audience. "Regurgitating" press releases has sadly become the norm for many outlets, but it trivializes the whole existence of news media.
- coliveira 6y agoYou have a misunderstanding about "validate it for accuracy". From the point of view of journalism, this validation only means that you're reporting that a statement was really made by someone, or that a fact occurred as the journalist saw it happening. It doesn't mean that the journalist will validate experiments, or investigate statements made by someone else.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI hope to never meet someone who's violated an iceberg.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoSlightly bizarrely, I was wondering yesterday if this might be possible. I suspected it probably would be, but logistics would be a problem - because you would need a lot of trained dogs+handlers to match the current need for tests.
- francisdrake 6y agoDepending on how accuracy is defined 95% might be a bad result, as for all imbalanced class problems
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoI wonder what dogs' ability to detect general sickness is. It would be good to have a control with other sicknesses.
- BurningFrog 6y agoDogs, at least some breeds, can detect enormous amounts of "smell" information. Only problem is how to make them tell people what they sense. Maybe some kind of dog brain MRI would be able to get the info directly?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jansan 6y agoAt least they can detect some forms of cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_cancer_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_cancer_detection
- amenghra 6y agoI have heard about dogs helping diabetic kids control their glucose level. Eg https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-year-boy-diabetes-dog-monitors-blood-sugar/story?id=53849723 https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-year-boy-diabetes-dog-monitors-...
- amelius 6y agoIf you have another illness, you shouldn't be on the streets either. Therefore, it doesn't reduce the usefulness of the test.
- BenjiWiebe 6y agoAssuming it's an infectious illness.
- coliveira 6y agoI guess nobody will know until we have methodologies that test the odor of people. We don't have. But at least we now have ML techniques that could be used to do that in the future.
- outime 6y agoHere in Finland authorities use them at least in the airport and it’s claimed that “testing has shown an accuracy level of nearly 100% even 5 days before actual symptoms appear” [1]. [1] https://unric.org/en/finland-first-in-europe-to-use-dogs-to-detect-covid-19/ https://unric.org/en/finland-first-in-europe-to-use-dogs-to-...
- Loic 6y agoAs an anecdote, our complete family was infected early December. I lost my smell and taste capacities for about 4 days. My wife and oldest son (13) still have very limited smell and taste. But now, I still cannot smell my body odour when I sweat. Normally, it is really a strong odour. But not any more. As my wife and oldest son cannot smell, I cannot ask them and going next door and ask if I smell or not after doing a workout is not something I want to do right now :-D I would not be surprised if dogs could smell a disruption in the "normal human body odour pattern". This is just a unique sample point without statistical value but if you have the same experience, do not hesitate to contact me.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago> I would not be surprised if dogs could smell a disruption in the "normal human body odour pattern". But isn't COVID induced Ansomia makes us loose the sense of smell and not that we stop generating body odour?
- Ruthalas 6y agoI think the parent comment meant that the infected individual might not be addressing the smell because they could not perceive it, and it would therefore be greater than typical for them.
- Loic 6y agoYes, the three of us lost our sense of smell. Now, I am back and can smell again, but I cannot smell my body odour after a workout even so normally it smells really. This is at the moment the only thing I cannot smell. The questions are: is it because the infection had for effect a change in my body odour? Or is it because I recovered all my sense at the exception of the capacity to smell my own body odour? Nobody in the family can answer (too small or still suffering from anosmia) and I am not yet ready to ring the bell next door after a hard workout and ask the poor soul the smell!
- CapriciousCptl 6y agoWhere is the study? I couldn't find the link. "95-percent success rate" is meaningless without context. Specificity/sensitivity, prevalence and the gold standard used all matter. You, too, can detect coronavirus with 100% "success" (and much higher than 100% that depending how you calculate it). bool carriesCoronavirus(human *subject) {return true;}
- remram 6y agoThere doesn't seem to be a study. There seem to be no scientists or statically-trained people involved at any point. The article is the same everywhere I look (provided by AFP, French news agency) and only mentions "dog trainers working in their own time" who "rely on scant financial means".
- scarmig 6y agoOn the other hand, if you tested everyone using this strategy and quarantined those who tested positive, you'd eliminate Covid in two months. If adding a magic doggie in to deliver the news would help compliance, all the better!
- Shish2k 6y ago> [by treating everybody as infected] you'd eliminate Covid in two months Not to mention a ton of other illnesses. I do wonder if “the world’s governments pay everybody to stock up on food and stay home for two months” would actually be a huge win for humanity, and maybe even in the short-term it would work out cheaper than two years of 75%-lockdown :P
- nanis 6y ago> the world's governments pay everybody to stock up on food and stay home for two months What's that going to do other than to cause the price of "food" to go up and cause a bunch of people to die in the worst Black Friday reenactments? Note that while it is possible to calculate a weighted price index of food, people do not eat the weighted average of all food sold. It is fantasies of control by people that got us to the point where every day every where governments are burning away their countries' wealth and their citizens' futures.
- koolk3ychain 6y agoAs cool as this development is, I can't help but think about how this could be grossly abused and used as another means of detaining or abusing certain populations state or federal gov might not like. "Pointing", or the provable technique of eliciting a "positive" detection response from a detection animal, has long been a huge point of contention for use of drug dogs during traffic stops - especially in California and Illinois. A huge proportion of these stops also involved the use of "pointing" drug dogs to lead to egregious 4th amendment violations. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met-canine-officers-20110105-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met...
- 29athrowaway 6y agoCops need a reasonable suspicion to search your vehicle or belongings. And an easy way of claiming they have one is having dogs point at things, usually on command. It's a legal loophole. Other tricks include claiming you have a slurred speech, or that they smelled alcohol breath or marijuana. Then they can search your stuff, find nothing and say it's a false positive.
- throwaway2245 6y agoHaving dogs point at things is already (or should be) "search".
- koolk3ychain 6y agoIn many states, a dog indicating is used as the threshold of probable cause.
- dehrmann 6y agoHuawei worked on AI that can recognize Uyghurs. Seems like a reasonable extension of that.
- fock 6y agojust a question, because this virus came from bats and now infects minks and humans: why should dogs be exempt from spreading or getting infected with it?
- AshamedCaptain 6y agoOf course, when a random PR declares they have trained a ML to detect Covid with 95% accuracy, the public answer is "Why are governments not doing this?" . But whenever another random PR declares they have trained a dog to detect Covid with 95% accuracy, the public reply is skepticism.
- libeclipse 6y agoLove these useless comments
- ashtonkem 6y agoFor whatever reason, the public seems to have a “newer is better” bias, where new techniques and materials are assumed to be inherently better. This often creates confusion and surprise when people learn that sometimes newer techniques are cheaper or more convenient but not better in every dimension; such as the fact that well developed 35mm film beat out the alternatives until very recently.[0] It’s not clear to me if this bias is a result of marketing/current society, or if it’s an innate part of what drives us to make new stuff as a species. 0 - https://youtu.be/rVpABCxiDaU https://youtu.be/rVpABCxiDaU
- dalu 6y agoLies, it's actually 94.643
- rozab 6y agoI have a deep skepticism about sniffer dogs. This article by the National Narcotic Detector Dog Association just about sums it up: https://nndda.org/the-double-blind-attack/ https://nndda.org/the-double-blind-attack/ >While the scientific community highly endorses double-blind testing, it can have disastrous effects on canine teams. As there is no way to determine whether the canine responded correctly at the time of the alert, the question is, should the handler reward the canine? This is a vital question due to the fact that detection canines are largely trained on a fixed ratio reward system where the canine is rewarded immediately for almost every correct response.
- azinman2 6y agoIt’s easy to go beyond fixed reward to variable, which is also very powerful.
- kzrdude 6y agoWhy can't a third party immediately confirm (or deny) the dog's alert in the double blind test?
- cptskippy 6y agoThat's what I was wondering. The whole argument that double blind testing can't work because the dog needs positive reinforcement seems specious. I'm imagining a room full of opaque cake domes with drugs under some. The dog identifies one, it is lifted to reveal the truth. No one knows how many domes hide drugs, the test proceeds until the dog/handler conclude it.
- eappleby 6y agoApparently, the Miami Heat (NBA) are also using dogs to screen fans for coronavirus. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30770833/heat-use-coronavirus-sniffing-dogs-screen-fans https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/30770833/heat-use-corona...
- Geminidog 6y agoThis makes the avenue for detecting covid the same avenue for getting it. Covid is transmitted through breathing which is just a less aggressive form of sniffing. Thus the doggo would get covid then spread it to everyone he sniffs.
- axegon_ 6y agoSimilar approach taken in France[1] not that long ago. What seems interesting here is the fact that France uses Malinois dogs, which seems a bit odd. They are insanely trainable and smart(I am saying that as someone who owns a working line Malinois) but their noses are nowhere nearly as effective or sensitive as say terriers(which is what they have gone for in Czechia). I'm guessing it's a "work with what we have already" situation but still curious to know if there is something more to it. [1] https://www.france24.com/en/video/20201103-researchers-train-sniffer-dogs-to-detect-covid-19 https://www.france24.com/en/video/20201103-researchers-train...
- m3kw9 6y agoDog catches Covid, sniffs and passes it to person of interest, smells on Covid said person.
- inglor_cz 6y agoInteresting, I am Czech and I only hear about it here on HN. But it is plausible, Czechs reeeeally like dogs and love to train them. I wonder if an artificial nose could be constructed doing the same thing. Smell is a potential diagnostic tool. For example, it seems that certain people can smell Parkinson's disease and that the biomarkers have actually been identified: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2019/acs-presspac-march-20-2019/sniffing-out-parkinsons-disease.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2019/... We are not very good, as a civilization, in artificial smelling. Being humans, we develop machines that try to 'see' and 'hear'. A canine civilization would probably develop a smell-distinguishing AI first.
- megous 6y agoI'm also Czech, and I don't trust any of this. Methodology is suspect, and barely described. And as someone already pointed in the comments, this needs to be double blind, to avoid suggestions from the dog trainer. I'd also like to see control samples from people with other respiratory illnesses, etc.
- inglor_cz 6y agoI definitely concur that strict verification is necessary. That is one of the reason why I would prefer an electronic nose. For all their problems, machines do not want to please their handlers.
- alexpotato 6y agoI remember there being a project during the Iraq War that sought to duplicate the effectiveness of bomb sniffing dogs with some kind of chemical device. Long story short: millions spent and it was concluded that dogs are still both the best and most cost effective method for sniffing explosives.
- petre 6y agoToo bad the dogs sometimes get injured and are put to sleep. I've read about rats trained to sniff landmines. Probably their training is more expensive?
- dusted 6y agoI'd be somewhat worried that the dogs get or spreads covid..