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Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

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

#121

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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.

This is something of a pet peeve of mine. Somebody will post a hunting video or whatever and people, who otherwise enjoy meat, will freak out watching an animal die. The irony is that the way these animals die, with a clean lung shot or whatever, is a vastly more humane than the stuff the mass production meat you buy at the store is put through. They live their lives in the wild open and free as they see fit. And aft…

This goes for humans too, succesfull oppressors dehumanize first, then massmurder.

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

#122
post #107

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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.…

Please let's not. It's off topic and we all know that it won't lead to constructive discussion.

I often think there's a subset of people that have scripts to search Hacker News for 'gender' or 'sex' just so they can get involved with a "I identify as a rare breed of pineapple" and "muh gender" type of comment.

The only thing that's funny is that on a thread about lab rats reacting differently to male or female lab workers, people feel the need to start a holy war about topics as pointless as this one.

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

#124
post #67
post #54

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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…

You appear to be conflating several identifiably distinct things (e.g. identity, sexual orientation, role in society) under the label of "gender" and then wondering why people seem to treat them differently even though you've applied the same label to all of them. The contradiction is an artifact of your measurement technique.

It's still a developing field of study, but AFAIK the current thinking based on the evidence is that gender roles are largely social constructs while gender identity is at least partly based in biology (that is, the brain has some innate conception of gender even if many of the implications of those genders are filled in by society). And sexual orientation is yet another separate thing.

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

#125

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that's basically a condescending mansplain

Are men not allowed to teach? Adam Ruins Everything is an educational show - they’re all actors

The problem is that the researcher is set up as a terrible straw man, and that in turn makes Adam look a bit like an asshole here, even before getting to animal testing: To start off, she claims that “you can’t [prove things wrong in] science!” … excuse me?! Science is all about [hypotheses] being proved wrong. That’s quite literally its definition.

On we go: “Everyone knows testing on rodents is practically the same as doing actual human trials”. Actually, no competent researcher thinks that. I’ll grant that it’s a fairly common misconception in the media, and one that’s definitely worth addressing.

But it’s disingenuous and counter-productive to do this by creating other misconceptions — namely about what science is (see above), and that scientists are somehow oblivious to the (very obvious!) deficiencies of animal testing. That doesn’t mean that mouse model research is useless — far from it (unfortunately). It’s a crucial first step in a lot of biological and medical research.

To be sure, Dr Raza — as an expert — makes excellent points! But so does the FDA when it mandates animal trials before human trials: Adam points to an example where a drug went to human trials and almost killed the patients even though it was safe in mice. OK. Now imagine how often that would happen if we didn’t have preliminary mouse studies.

That said, all (!) animal research scientists I know support stronger regulations on mouse research. And, although I can’t speak for the US, the regulations are already a lot stricter in the UK and Germany than claimed in Adam’s video.

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

#126
post #118
post #85

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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…

I don't buy the argument/implication that it's somehow hypocritical to oppose something while actively benefiting from it, as long as one is upfront about that fact. For example, say that we have genuinely useful medical information as a result of Unit 731 experiments and similar crimes (which may or may not be the case; I have no idea). There's no contradiction if one person supports using those existing results to…

> because the personal sacrifice would only be worth it to me if it came attached to a systemic change

This is the reason why. You may prefer the world to be a certain way, but you aren't willing to make any sacrifice to make it be a particular way, so it appears that you don't actually care about an opinion that you are espousing.

People who don't eat meat have a net effect on a reduced demand for meat, reducing the amount of cattle. Becoming a vegetarian doesn't stop everyone eating meat, but it helps.

[I'm not a vegetarian but I have some respect for people who are willing to stand by their beliefs]

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

#127
post #118
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't buy the argument/implication that it's somehow hypocritical to oppose something while actively benefiting from it, as long as one is upfront about that fact. For example, say that we have genuinely useful medical information as a result of Unit 731 experiments and similar crimes (which may or may not be the case; I have no idea). There's no contradiction if one person supports using those existing results to…

Maybe be the change you want to see in the world?

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

#128
post #39
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 ...

Hardly new. Feynman was criticizing psych research for this sort of thing - inadequate controls - half a century ago in his talk on Cargo Cult Science. http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

And what happens when you have more variables than you can control?

It's naive to think all of them can be controlled, even in simple animals as mice

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

#129

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the man depicted in the animation is explaining only to women the actors behind the cartoon are reading a script written by someone...are you fooled by the puppetry ?

> the actors behind the cartoon are reading a script written by someone... So.. it really doesn't matter who teaches and who listens, because ultimately they're both actors reading from a script. How does that play in favor of your argument? Not to mention the woman he's explaining to is a scientist researcher, and at the end of the video, they have Dr. Azra Raza as a guest (who is also a woman) to further solidify t…

the cartoon depicts an incompetent woman scientist being talked-down to by an arrogant dick! It has the form:

woman: " science says X"

man : " actually the truth is Y"

The jerk also talks-down to us the audience. It's terrible science-education and it's not "humor"

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

#130
post #106
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So rats have a built in gene sequencer and detect the base pairs directly?

Your friend's eye color is defined by some genes. You don't need a gene sequencer to see what they are.

(S)he can be wearing contact lens, though.

And the researchers can be taking drugs changing their smell, possibly changing the mice behaviour.

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