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This question has an accepted answer which might be considered dangerous:

Big hound has eaten corn cobs what can I do to help him pass them?

If you look at two of the other answers, the dogs required emergency surgery - one from a bowel obstruction and one from the corn being caught in the stomach.

This Stack Exchange Meta post When or should you delete your incorrect answer? discusses how to deal with these incorrect answers network wide. However, in this case - it can cause the death of an animal if visitors to the site take the advice of the most upvoted/accepted answer.

What if anything should we do?

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2 Answers 2

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If you think an answer is not helpful or is harmful, give it a down vote and/or post a comment under the the answer with your concerns. Possibly, the answer will be edited to address your concerns.

Next, if you know or can research a better answer, post your own answer. The Populist badge:

Highest scoring answer that outscored an accepted answer with score of more than 10 by more than 2x. This badge can be awarded multiple times.

exists to recognize posters of these answers.

It is not unusual for a new user to post a question, get a quick answer, and accept that answer. Maybe the OP never comes back. So the answer stays accepted. Or maybe this really is the the answer the user needed, accepting is a privilege granted only to the question asker. This occurs across all SE sites and is also addressed here. (I have also seen this issue better addressed in other places but only finding this one currently.)

The nature of SE sites allows for both good and bad answers to be posted and accepted. Community voting brings the best answers to the top.

If the answer is really bad, when it has a score of -1 or lower the community can vote to delete it.

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  • I'd agree with this. Often I'll find on StackOverflow that a bad/dangerous answer has been accepted. That answer will have a comment on it which is highly upvoted saying something like 'Do not do this - its dangerous, instead look here'. It's enough to flag it because a conscientious user should also read a highly upvoted comment before taking internet advice when it relates to a pet.
    – Henders
    Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 10:11
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I'm not really alarmed by the corn cob post because the top answer doesn't say "your dog won't get blocked if you give him water" it says "the best home remedy is water and watchful waiting". Watchful waiting is what the questioner's vet advised on the phone, so is it really dangerous?

Ideally there would be more details about what to watch for (lethargy, vomiting are covered in second answer but not first), but I don't think it's inherently dangerous as it stands.

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