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Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

nature.com

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Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#81

Post by jaggederest »

gwern wrote: post #29
cm2012 wrote: post #20

This reminds me of Feynman's story of the researcher who eliminated possible variables in rat experiments one by one, to find a surprising result (EDIT: To find that rats didn't need smell, spatial relationships, taste, or vision to find the cheese - the sound of the floor was enough) https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/02/the_rat_experi...

I never did manage to trace Feynman's story back to a source, but nevertheless, also something Derek Lowe repeatedly covers for biology/chemistry on "In the Pipeline": a lot of the 'cell lines' or 'reagents' used in lab work turn out to just not be what they're supposed to be, either because they never were or they degraded into something else in storage or something. So to give a recent paper he blogged, there's som…

I think it would be very interesting to have labs run detailed A-A studies to investigate these kind of things.

"This kind of mouse we raised under these conditions, and we changed nothing, but they varied in these ways over time"

I often wonder whether the variables we check against are actually as independent and subject to the central limit theorem as we assume.

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#82

Post by Taniwha »

ardit33 wrote: post #67
Taniwha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes it is, and in this case I think we're probably still figuring out the actual cause But one assumes that in this case the cause might be that the pheromones that people all hopped up on testosterone give off is different those given off by people who aren't .... those people would likely be cis-males, trans-males who've transitioned, trans-females who haven't transitioned, and some trans people who are currently t…

if that is true, then being a different gender is something that is 'teachable', and not at least part 'innate', i.e. biological preposition for trait and behaviors that are predetermined in early pre-birth, and/or early childhood, and not imprinted by society/media/etc... aka, by now, we'd have the "gay cure"...... if you believe that there is a predisposition of some individuals to act to have gender specific behav…

Sorry what I really meant was that "I think we're probably still figuring out the actual cause of why the rats behave the way they do"

In general I don't think it's as simple as being one way or the other, some people certainly seem to innately feel they were born into the wrong gender, and just want that set right, while there seem to be other people for whom it seems to be fluid, that want to be able to choose and change. I don't see it's much of any of the rest of our business other than we should make them welcome in society just like anyone else.

As far as it being a 'social construct' I think the whole thing that "people with XX chromosomes must be women and people with XY must be men, or alternatively people born with penises ...." is obviously a social thing - likely tied to rigorous western sex roles and trying to force people into them - other cultures have provided places for people with differing genders - Fa'afafine, Hijra etc and traditionally treated them differently than in the west ... so yes definitely a 'social construct'

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#83

Post by [deleted] »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #43
Simon_says wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought some live lobsters to kill (humanely, with a knife to the brain) and steam. I only had him in my custody for a couple hours, but I got attached. I had a bad experience thinking about taking a life, and it kinda fucked me up. I don't think I'll be doing it again. If I had to kill everything I ate, I'd be vegetarian. But I have no problem buying it at the store.

Is that intellectually honest, to hide from the truth you know about your food?

[deleted]

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#84

Post by zaarn »

ardit33 wrote: post #67
Taniwha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes it is, and in this case I think we're probably still figuring out the actual cause But one assumes that in this case the cause might be that the pheromones that people all hopped up on testosterone give off is different those given off by people who aren't .... those people would likely be cis-males, trans-males who've transitioned, trans-females who haven't transitioned, and some trans people who are currently t…

if that is true, then being a different gender is something that is 'teachable', and not at least part 'innate', i.e. biological preposition for trait and behaviors that are predetermined in early pre-birth, and/or early childhood, and not imprinted by society/media/etc... aka, by now, we'd have the "gay cure"...... if you believe that there is a predisposition of some individuals to act to have gender specific behav…

>If you believe gender is a complete social construct

IIRC the nature-nurture studies show that nature is atleast 50% of the cognitive result on growing up. Atleast since the studies also binned a lot of stuff into "nurture" without much consideration as long as it's not nature. It might be more.

Thinking that gender is a purely social construct is just backwards to everything we've discovered in modern science. People can be gay because of their upbringing but most of the time that is just how they are. Same with transsexuality, it's mostly how people are not how they want to grow up, which should receive utmost respect. (though on the other hand, if CRISPR advances more we might have a "gay cure" and a "trans cure". Especially the ethical debate of a "trans cure" would be interesting)

> Some of this feminist/transhuman thinking, [...] are not rooted in reality

Luckily not all feminists. My sister has been one of those hardcore feminists but after having a situation in which she had to decide between getting a good grade and fighting for injustice against women, she changed her attitude that she should not fight against injustice like that if she can't uphold her principles in all situations.

Her reaction to this study now, relaxed, would probably have been different a year ago. I think a lot of people might react badly to the study and I'll keep an eye on it.

Reactions to studies are a study of humans in of itself already, observing the acceptance of data by a specific group can tell a lot about a group. Like pheromones can tell a rat a lot about a person.

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#85

Post by nezzle »

legohead wrote: post #78
Taniwha wrote: post #3

Before anyone who didn't actually read the link goes off at it - this is a peer reviewed, repeated study - mice react to drugs differently depending on the sex of the researcher, don't in a fume hood, do always in a fume hood with a human male's t-shirt. It potentially plays havoc with ALL past experiments with rodents ...

Rodent research is a horrible testing method. This video explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHl0nIdbiLA

Yes, it's terrible. Make sure none of the following list apply to you or anyone you care for.

>If you’ve ever taken antibiotics, had a vaccine, a blood transfusion, dialysis, an organ transplant, chemotherapy, bypass surgery or joint replacement, you have benefited from animal testing and research. In fact, practically every drug, treatment, medical device, diagnostic tool or cure we have today was developed with the help of lab animals.

>Many diseases that once killed millions of people every year are now either preventable, treatable or have been eradicated altogether. Immunizations against polio, diphtheria, mumps, rubella and hepatitis save countless lives and the survival rates for many major diseases are at an all-time high thanks to the discovery of new drugs and the design of sophisticated medical devices and surgical procedures.

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#86

Post by swift »

ardit33 wrote: post #67
Taniwha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes it is, and in this case I think we're probably still figuring out the actual cause But one assumes that in this case the cause might be that the pheromones that people all hopped up on testosterone give off is different those given off by people who aren't .... those people would likely be cis-males, trans-males who've transitioned, trans-females who haven't transitioned, and some trans people who are currently t…

if that is true, then being a different gender is something that is 'teachable', and not at least part 'innate', i.e. biological preposition for trait and behaviors that are predetermined in early pre-birth, and/or early childhood, and not imprinted by society/media/etc... aka, by now, we'd have the "gay cure"...... if you believe that there is a predisposition of some individuals to act to have gender specific behav…

There’s definitely a schism along the fault lines you describe. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a “TERF”, look it up.

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#89

Post by cristianpascu »

rodrodrod wrote: post #53
wsc981 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this doesn't make sense. Gender is a social construct.

The research is concerned with sex, not gender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction

Whatever the Holy Wikipedia says about the distinction, isn't it funny, not to say something else, that we use the same words for two/three concepts that are, supposedly, completely different and vary independently? I'm a male identifying as female expressing as male, aka sex:gender:gender-expression.

Because, you know, people were so dumb until social-constructivism landed on Earth like the Messiah no-one expected. And we need to be re-educated. Or else.

What baffles me most is the insistence that one can build any kind of objective distinction based on subjective experiences, that is, what one feels. We're all capable of sadness, joy, excitement, and what not. But we can not build any kind of categorization (read diversity) of people based on these concepts/states of mind. I don't identify as sad, although I'm sad from time to time. No one does. Companies can not be forced to hire more sad people, for the sake of diversity. Yet, now, it's compulsory to have more people hired because they report some sort of internal and inaccessible state of mind which they express using words used for categorizing people based on the shape of their genitalia.

Re: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

#90

Post by andai »

cm2012 wrote: post #20

This reminds me of Feynman's story of the researcher who eliminated possible variables in rat experiments one by one, to find a surprising result (EDIT: To find that rats didn't need smell, spatial relationships, taste, or vision to find the cheese - the sound of the floor was enough) https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/02/the_rat_experi...

"They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running the rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats."

But what Young discovered, according to Feynman was infinitely more vital.

"In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats."

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