How to Use false positive in a Sentence

false positive

noun
  • There are false positives that need to be kept at bay.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 23 May 2026
  • Don’t be fooled by a false positive over the next two months.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Good writing thus can lead to false positives.
    — Uri Samet, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • One of the most promising tests has a false positive rate of less than one percent.
    — Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, Fortune, 18 June 2024
  • What are the false positive and false negative rates for this test?
    — Cory Franklin, Chicago Tribune, 1 Sep. 2025
  • But those methods are prone to false positives, Mann says.
    — Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 9 Apr. 2026
  • The high false positive rate persuaded many to go ahead and have the colonoscopy in the first place.
    — Binghui Huang, The Indianapolis Star, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Though their tests were later revealed to be false positives.
    — Kimberlee Speakman, Peoplemag, 12 Dec. 2023
  • This is a false positive and can indubitably arise.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 16 May 2026
  • This is a false positive and can indubitably arise.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 24 May 2026
  • Ten of the brochures never mention that a false positive can happen.
    — New York Times, 1 Jan. 2022
  • Tests with low specificity are more likely to show a false positive.
    — Alyssa Hui, Verywell Health, 22 Jan. 2024
  • This helps reduce false positives, which have long been a plague for compliance teams.
    — Roman Eloshvili, Forbes.com, 24 July 2025
  • But the question of false positives and false negatives did come up.
    — Alice Hines, ProPublica, 20 Jan. 2026
  • That’s because allergy skin and blood tests can cause false positives.
    — Ruth Jessen Hickman, Md, Health, 17 Apr. 2025
  • There is always the chance that the test will reveal a false positive or negative.
    — Kaitlin Sullivan, Health, 26 July 2023
  • The result is a lot of false positives that can, and have, led to the miscarriage of justice.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 5 Nov. 2024
  • Luminar will need to make sure that its system isn’t triggered by false positives.
    — Andrew J. Hawkins, The Verge, 9 Jan. 2024
  • The key is to watch out for rendering false positives and false negatives.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 19 Aug. 2025
  • So some of the face match results may be false positives from channels that have used a short clip under fair use guidelines.
    — ArsTechnica, 21 Oct. 2025
  • All tests carry a risk of false positive or negative results.
    — Jen Christensen, CNN, 24 Feb. 2023
  • This ensures context isn’t lost—and reduces false positives.
    — Priya Mohan, Forbes.com, 5 Aug. 2025
  • Pangram has an extremely low false positive rate.
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 19 May 2026
  • And a lot of the time, the signatures are really non-unique and there’s going to be a lot of false positives.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 29 May 2024
  • For instance, there can be a surge in false positives, which can overwhelm security teams.
    — Steve Durbin, Forbes, 24 Mar. 2025
  • Anxiety, fear and nervousness can all cause false positives in a polygraph test.
    — Rupal Patel, CNBC, 15 Apr. 2026
  • There is also the risk of false positive tests driving unnecessary use of health care services.
    — Charlotte Hu, Vox, 4 June 2024
  • Her research listed 18 studies that failed to account for these false positives.
    — Catherina Gioino, Fortune, 24 Feb. 2026
  • But what if quick action (in response to false positive test results) leads to very painful and expensive prostate biopsies?
    — Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 3 July 2025
  • Officials believe the initial test was a false positive and he was likely never exposed to the virus.
    — Vanessa Etienne, PEOPLE, 15 May 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'false positive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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