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[bodiddley]

If you think ravens being able to play the shell game is impressive, check out pigeons moonlighting as radiologists.  This blew my mind a few years ago:

To sum up, with 2 weeks of training, pigeons could detect malignancy in mammograms at 85% accuracy, or the equivalent of trained human doctors.  Give them 25 days of training and they were up to 90% accurate.

How are pigeons able to read mammograms?  They spend much of their day staring at granular patterns on the ground to detect seeds.  They're specialists with amazing visual recall.

A very good article with some pics of the set-up:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pigeons-can-spot-breast-cancer-medical-images-180957323/

A shorter summary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/science/pigeons-detect-breast-cancer-tumors.html

The full study:
Pigeons as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images

I feed a few dozen spotted turtle doves in my garden, and I often greet them:
"Hey little radiologists."

How do the pigeons do it?
They were planning to do follow-up experiments to try to determine what exactly the birds observed to make their decisions.  Which could aid humans in doing a better job.

[josh]

If you think ravens being able to play the shell game is impressive, check out pigeons moonlighting as radiologists.  This blew my mind a few years ago:

To sum up, with 2 weeks of training, pigeons could detect malignancy in mammograms at 85% accuracy, or the equivalent of trained human doctors.  Give them 25 days of training and they were up to 90% accurate.

Why aren't we just using them, then?! (Not a question for you, just one prompted by your post.)

[bodiddley]

You ever try to get medical malpractice insurance on a bird?
Actually the specter of lawsuits is a big disincentive.
Also, we're used to dogs in law enforcement, even giant rats detecting land mines, but having animals perform medical tests is hard for many to wrap their heads around.

The early speculation was that probably you could use pigeons to do mundane repetitive radiology tasks.  Newly designed x-ray machines or new mammography software have to be tested extensively to prove they are accurate and allow for correct diagnoses at a high level.  Ordinarily you'd have to pay a trained radiologist to sit there for days and weeks grinding through mammograms to generate enough data.  Tedious work for a highly paid and trained doctor.  This might be the kind of repetitive radiology reading pigeons could do with a couple of low-paid lab researchers handling things.

I was amazed at the whole concept, but especially how quickly these birds learned to be expert radiologists.  2 weeks and they were very good; 3 weeks and experts.  Of course these were already lab pigeons familiar with the concept of working for food rewards.  But reading mammograms?  Detecting breast cancer is not easy for well-trained radiologists.  And pigeons were naturals.  Just amazing.

[josh]

You ever try to get medical malpractice insurance on a bird?
Actually the specter of lawsuits is a big disincentive.
Also, we're used to dogs in law enforcement, even giant rats detecting land mines, but having animals perform medical tests is hard for many to wrap their heads around.

I asked because there are hospitals using dogs for cancer detection, albeit not many. I don't imagine malpractice insurance on dogs is substantially easier to acquire than on pigeons, despite their preferred placement in our hierarchy of animals.

[Hamilton Samuels]

I still see the similarity between death penalty and homicide, i. e., both involve death by violence.

And how do you feel about abortion?

[bodiddley]

A bit of a stretch to call a lethal injection violence imo, but in any case it's many levels below the violence a killer deploys on their victims.

As for animal practitioners, there is a whole infrastructure of dog training, people are used to teaching them, etc.  While training pigeons to do tasks is a specialty field probably at a limited level for lab research.  Could be scaled up.  And one advantage is the pigeons could do their radiology reads in a research lab, so they don't need to interact with patients, as dogs need to to sniff out cancer.

I spotted an article last week that headlined dogs sniffing out CV infections form armpits, but I didn't click through.  I assumed if it is viable we'll be hearing more about it soon enough.

[josh]

A bit of a stretch to call a lethal injection violence imo, but in any case it's many levels below the violence a killer deploys on their victims.

So, if a fellow just went around sticking needles into people, that wouldn't be assault?

And if a murderer did that to kill people, it would be better than if they killed them "with violence." Huh.

[bodiddley]

Yeah, context never matters.

Not sure why my doctor isn't arrested for serial assault.
Or boxers aren't arrested for assault.

[josh]

Yeah, context never matters.

Not sure why my doctor isn't arrested for serial assault.
Or boxers aren't arrested for assault.

The suggestion I am making is that if it is violent when done by a random person, whether murder or "just" assault, then it is still violent when the government does it to murderers.

Having watched a couple videos of our executions, they are violent - injection, electrocution, firing squad, hanging... it's all violent.

I suspect that we could give a non-violent execution if we wanted to, but we just don't seem to have that urge.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.

Seems most of us have already determined for ourselves that we are either for or against DP and are not likely to change our thinking with regard to it's exercise.

I am suggesting another new topic, with perhaps more room to explore new avenues of shared thought: Can people be taught character traits like determination to succeed and to persevere? Or is there an overriding biological nature that determines such traits in humans?

 

[carlos123]

I still see the similarity between death penalty and homicide, i. e., both involve death by violence.

And how do you feel about abortion?

Ambivalent, and you?

But I would not think of imposing my opinion on a woman by penalizing her if she chose to do something I find hard to accept.

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.

Magister dixit.

[josh]

Looks like only Bo and I have nuanced opinions on the DP.

Seems most of us have already determined for ourselves that we are either for or against DP and are not likely to change our thinking with regard to it's exercise.

No, but I can see why it could be presented that way.

My argument with Bo was not about the death penalty but with what I thought was a pretty narrow definition of violence.

[josh]

I am suggesting another new topic, with perhaps more room to explore new avenues of shared thought: Can people be taught character traits like determination to succeed and to persevere? Or is there an overriding biological nature that determines such traits in humans?

My suspicion is that it varies from person to person how strongly wired they are.

Further, I suspect it is easier to drag somebody from inclined toward what we think of positive traits to the negative than the other way around, just as it is easier to diminish their physical, intellectual, and emotional potential through application of substances (alcohol, nicotine, etc.) and/or deprivation of positive intellectual or emotional stimulation.

We know from identical twin studies that their being raised together leads to divergent personalities, while being raised apart and not knowing each other leads to convergent personalities.

We know from family studies that siblings raised by the same parents by no means turn out with the same moral senses!

[kidcarter8]

Here's your death penalty case

https://www.foxnews.com/us/missouri-girl-4-found-dead-after-beating-police-say

[josh]

Here's your death penalty case

https://www.foxnews.com/us/missouri-girl-4-found-dead-after-beating-police-say

2nd degree murder? No, I don't think that one will see either party get death, let alone serve as an exemplar for the issue.