[bigiain]

"Handlers were falsely told that two conditions contained a paper marking scent location (human influence). Two conditions contained decoy scents (food/toy) to encourage dog interest in a false location (dog influence). Conditions were (1) control; (2) paper marker; (3) decoy scent; and (4) paper marker at decoy scent. No conditions contained drug or explosive scent; any alerting response was incorrect. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used with search condition as the independent variable and number of alerts as the dependent variable. Additional nonparametric tests compared human and dog influence. There were 225 incorrect responses, with no differences in mean responses across conditions"

"To test this, we influenced handler beliefs and evaluated subsequent handler/dog team performance according to handler-identified alerts. The overwhelming number of incorrect alerts identified across conditions confirms that handler beliefs affect performance."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-010-0373-2