Talk:Study says dogs can smell lung and breast cancer

I could use some help on this article:

• COPY-EDIT! I'm not a native English speaker!!!
• finding an appropriate image
• fixing the w: in the Homepage link
  • Done.

Please remove the request on the collaboration page of the newsroom after this is published. thx, --Stevenfruitsmaak 23:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

develop

am not convinced this is a current news event. the latest source listed is dated several months ago. also, headline needs to be much less categorical - is there scientific consensus that dogs do indeed...? if there is, then it should be mentioned and sourced explicitly. Doldrums 04:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

• I was not aware of a policy that only allows current events -in fact, I only found 1 policy which stated it haphazerdly, with no clear definition of what is "current" news. Several months have passed indeed, but I listed it because it was not yet on WikiNews. If it is against policy then maybe it could be stored at News Preparation for later use when another related article pops up. I started the article now because I saw an item about it on Belgian television yesterday (but it was broadcasted on the BBC earlier). But this illustrates that this kind of news doesn't become old news very fast, and even in terms of research 5 months is still not much.
• I think several experiments listed in this article all point to the same consensus, and I'm not aware of major controversies after the last article. It is also biologically very plausible and implied from anecdotes. I might have overzealously tried to make the title short and snappy, maybe we should go to "Dogs can be used to diagnose lung and breast cancer, study shows"? Or even "...study claims"?--Stevenfruitsmaak 11:48, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

news usually does refer to current events. Wikinews:Content guide says "News stories focus on a single current event or phenomenon" (i.e. without the accent on "current"). so while i have my doubts about whether a several months-old story qualifies as news, i've seen no definitive policy or guideline that says so. u may wish to check with a few other experienced wikinewsies - leave a notice for them to comment, wait a day or so.

i read thro' a couple of the "establishment" sources, and they express no strong doubts about the veracity of the claims. couple of points, though, which i think ought to be mentioned in our article:

1. comments by Dr. Donald Berry and Michael McCulloch, who express some scepticism over the results and have called for more tests to check the results.
2. WP says Integrative Cancer Therapies is a journal focusing on alternative/complementary medicine and that it "currently" has no impact factor available. similarly, the study was supported by an organisation that promotes(?) alternative medicine.
3. comments again by McCulloch and Dr. Gansler at the end of the article are relevant: while the results are interesting, what this may well lead to are other biochemical tests based on the chemical indicators recognised by dogs rather than more dogs in cancer clinics.

and finally, i appreciate the efforts u've put into writing this article and hope that u'll be able to keep contributing like this to wikinews. Doldrums 17:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

• Very funny that you refer to WP as a source... Of course I've had to create that article myself because otherwise there wouldn't be a valid link to that journal. If you look at the history of that WP article you'll find one Steven Fruitsmaak... You know these guys are looking at theories others dismiss and trying to apply rigourous methodology to it. Eg. Another study by the principal author was titled: "Astragalus-based Chinese herbs and platinum-based chemotherapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: meta-analysis of randomized trials." So you see they're scientific and alternative at the same time, it's called integrative medicine! I really believe they're on to something. Anyway, the media certainly jumped on it. I trusted the interested, academic reader to follow the link and read that article about that journal: the rest probably get's the picture when they read "little known journal".
• I'll insert the info you suggested.
• I think I'll write about medical topics mostly. You know I'm maintaining w:Portal:Medicine, we've just created a News-box, and frankly things on WikiNews about Health could be more interesting, so I decided to give it some input. But I won't keep up with 2 stories per week :-)

--Stevenfruitsmaak 21:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

looks like DR is going to return keep. may i suggest Study says dogs can smell lung and breast cancer as title? Doldrums 06:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, sounds like a great title to me.--Stevenfruitsmaak 13:05, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Typo

"wether" => "whether" Van der Hoorn (talk) 12:39, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Done --Skenmy ^talk 12:14, 4 April 2009 (UTC)