Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin flip is good enough

Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by elif on Friday August 07, 2015 @01:35PM (#10023735)

When i was moving and literally everything i owned and cared about was pulled out of my car at 2am and strewn on the sidewalk in the rain for hours, the "extra 155 false positives" seemed to matter a little more to me than it does to you.

This isn't a clinical study where the stats are everything. This is a real world situation where people are being profiled and it is legalized.

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Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by harryh on Friday August 07, 2015 @01:38PM (#10023755)

I was not arguing whether dogs with this level of success should be used or not. I was pointing out that the argument made in the essay misrepresented the facts. See my last sentence: "We can argue about whether that is good enough but comparing it to a coinflip makes no sense."

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Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by elif on Friday August 07, 2015 @01:46PM (#10023821)

Your point is that it is not comparable from a "I caught more bad guys" standpoint, which is fair.

But I think the other side: to say that a coin flip would punish less innocent people, makes it a fair comparison.

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Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by niels_olson on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:56PM (#10024271)

Er, no. A coin flip would punish more innocent people. This is an argument of specificity, not sensitivity. The "screening" test, the "sensitive" test, was when the officer decided to involve Lex.

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Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by merpnderp on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:47PM (#10024585)

Not if they've already been screened by the police. IE, if the cops only flip the coin once they would have brought in the dog, then it is no better than a coin flip.

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