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 rndn on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:46PM (#10024583)

As other people have said, you would actually want to have a ROC chart to see the full characteristics of the dog (you are only considering its specificity at the moment). It will probably look something like this (according to the article, not much better than a coin): https://i.imgur.com/PG3Jacn.png

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Re:Court rules drug dog barely more accurate than a coin fli... by CamperBob2 on Friday August 07, 2015 @03:55PM (#10024621)

That would be a fair point if the dog were given the opportunity to make both type-1 and type-2 errors. With the process behind a roadside traffic stop, we actually have no idea how often the dog would generate a false negative. We don't know its specificity in the real-world contexts where it actually matters. We just know that it is very, very sensitive... to something other than the presence of drugs.

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