Are Dogs 'Scientific Devices'?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/are-dogs-scientific-devices/264283/



Not since 1870 have American dogs faced such an important day in court.

As every schoolchild knows, our most famous dog trial occurred on September 23 of that year, when Senator G.G. Vest defended the worth of Ol' Drum, a wandering foxhound killed by a sheepfarmer, by delivering to a Johnson County, Missouri, courtroom his famous Eulogy of the Dog: "The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog," Vest said. Unable to resist such eloquence, the jury found for the dog-owner.

The stakes Wednesday are considerably higher than the statutory $50 in damages Vest won for Ol' Drum's owner. Wednesday's cases concern the professional reputations of Franky, a drug-sniffing K-9 officer of the Miami-Dade Police Department, and Aldo, the drug-sniffing pride of the Liberty County, Florida, Sheriff's Department -- and, beyond them, of all dogs in law enforcement.

Unlike the Ol' Drum case, no one disputes that Franky and Aldo are valuable. Instead, the Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether drug-sniffing dogs are (1) never intrusive and (2) always reliable. The answers will help shape the role dogs play in police work for years to come.

[yellowcanine]

1. No, dogs are people, just like corporations!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. And the clear answer is no since

dogs can be cued to give an alert signal by their handlers.

[slampoet]

3. The ability to train a dog is technology just like making a stone axe is technology.

ALL sociologists would agree on this.

Your post seems to be titled with a misleading question.....

A trained dog is of course technology........ a wild one isn't.

In Guns Germs and Steel the author refers to the items the Polynesians took to Hawaii as items of Technology, like Goats, Tarot root, and Pigs. It isn't these animals that are tech but the ability to use them that is.

Getting a Steak out of a pig you raised is technology just like teaching that pig to sniff out Truffles is also technology

If the Supreme Court rules any differently it is only because Law enforcement has been abusing this Technology for over a hundred and eighty years.

[wiggs]

4. If courts can find that corn is a patent-able invention, then they might find a dog is a device. nt