Reliability of Drug/Bomb Sniffing Canines

 

    We've all seen drug and bomb-sniffing dogs at the airport and used in police work but have you ever stopped to ask how reliable these animals are at detecting said substances. Man's best friend has been used in numerous detection operations from rescue dogs saving humans to more recently a diagnostic tool for COVID-19. This is due to their incredible olfactory ability which is far more powerful than our own. Dogs can even smell chemicals produced by health conditions such as certain cancers, this is astounding and it's no surprise we want to harness this ability. 

    However, as much as we like to believe our canine friends always get the smells right this is not the case. Therefore is it ethical to use these dogs in situations where a false positive could land someone under arrest or put the canines themselves in harm's way? In training, these dogs undergo to detect these smells there needs to be discrimination between scents. For example, the volatile smell dogs detect in methamphetamine is also found in certain flowers so dogs need to be able to discriminate between them. 

    In a 2021 study, researchers put this to the test to determine the olfactory accuracy of trained canines. This study tested trained bomb dogs' ability to detect a 30-gram and 13-kilogram explosive. The dogs had no problem picking up the 30g sample, as this is the standard amount used in their training, but they had major difficult picking up the 13kg sample of the same substance. The researchers concluded that variable amounts of an explosive affect the dog's ability to recognize the scent and detect the explosive. A 2011 study tested how the trained canine's handler affects the dogs' ability to detect scents they were trained to recognize. Through a series of tests, researchers determined that handler beliefs affected the dogs' identification performance. 

    Is it truly ethical to use canine detection in drug and bomb detection when the handler's beliefs and the amount of substance can influence the dogs' ability? I believe it is if used correctly. While underlying biases of the handler could be used to detain people in settings like the airport, if there are proper screening procedures in place upon detection then unethical and discriminatory behavior can be mitigated. 

Aviles-Rosa, E. O., McGuinness, G., & Hall, N. J. (2021, May 8). Case study: An evaluation of detection dog generalization to a large quantity of an unknown explosive in the field. Animals : an open access journal from MDPI. Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8151250/

Eskandari, E., Ahmadi Marzaleh, M., Roudgari, H., Hamidi Farahani, R., Nezami-Asl, A., Laripour, R., Aliyazdi, H., Dabbagh Moghaddam, A., Zibaseresht, R., Akbarialiabad, H., Yousefi Zoshk, M., Shiri, H., & Shiri, M. (2021, March 5). Sniffer Dogs as a screening/diagnostic tool for covid-19: A proof of concept study - BMC infectious diseases. BioMed Central. Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-05939-6

Lit, L., Schweitzer, J. B., & Oberbauer, A. M. (2011, January 12). Handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes - animal cognition. SpringerLink. Retrieved November 28, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-010-0373-2