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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

#151

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

raverbashing wrote: post #128
arkades wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> when you have more variables than you can control

Worse: isn't this always true? Specific breed of mice, humans working with them, temperate, trace differences in food, light patterns, sounds (including sounds beyond human range)...

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

#152

Post by chiefalchemist »

anitil wrote: post #22
Declanomous wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In college we used to joke that animal behavior should be called animal misbehavior. We literally had one member of our lab group that could work with the mice and get sensible results. Neither of the guys could get any data that made sense, one of the women owned a cat and none of the results she had made any sense, and the fourth person (a woman) had no problem. I'm not sure if anybody suspected that rats reacted d…

Were rats as sensitive as mice?

Fwiw I have been assured that Big Pharma will swap out a set of mice (or whatever the test species is) as a way to find the results they're looking for. This was told to me by someone who does research for Big Pharma. Someone who I have no reason not to trust.

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

#153

Post by Chris2048 »

rkangel wrote: post #126
buu700 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but you aren't willing to make any sacrifice to make it be a particular way

Says who? OP is willing to make a sacrifice that results in desired effect - just not "any" sacrifice, which in this case does nothing.

If I think taxes should be lower, should I start paying less tax then I am asked to?

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

#154

Post by programmernews3 »

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

It is quite sexist that those mice assumed the researchers sex.

They should probably go on more sex & gender awareness courses.

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

#155

Post by Fricken »

alt2501 wrote: post #142
Fricken wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobsters have about 100,000 neurons in their whole bodies. Less than half as many as an ant or fruit fly.

Perhaps you forgot about the significance of life?

No. But the humane slaughter of lobsters is fairly low on my list of priorities for that sort of thing.

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

#156

Post by agumonkey »

Simon_says wrote: post #12
stevenwoo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's long been thought that a large percentage of studies on mice can not be replicated in humans because we are such different species but we use mice because it is cheap. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_t... Some larger animals might be somewhat closer but a.) much more expensive b.) more ethically challenging to kill/drug something more intelligent at the scale at which we do mice An acq…

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.

I think it's hard to kill when you have comfort. If I was alone in a forest I wouldn't think long (your brain wouldn't mind a bit).

The saddest part of the desensitization to killing is the waste. You wouldn't waste much if you had to kill it too. You'd know the value.

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

#157

Post by freeflight »

Declanomous wrote: post #9
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 ...

In college we used to joke that animal behavior should be called animal misbehavior. We literally had one member of our lab group that could work with the mice and get sensible results. Neither of the guys could get any data that made sense, one of the women owned a cat and none of the results she had made any sense, and the fourth person (a woman) had no problem. I'm not sure if anybody suspected that rats reacted d…

I wonder how practical it would be to automate all the rodent handling/experimenting? Because that seems like it'd be the only way to properly remove such unaccountable influences, like people smelling of cat/giving off different smells and thus influencing the reactions of the animals.

Couldn't it also be possible that rodents reacting like that is the result of established practices? I.e.: Rodents get only handled by females, rodents adapt to that female smell while reacting differently to the male smell due to its unfamiliarity?

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

#158

Post by mabbo »

leggomylibro wrote: post #45
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #8

> She and Gould suspect that the antidepressant effect is the result of a specific interaction between ketamine and the male odour in the mouse brain. Wow, this is a really fascinating study, and goes to show how evaluating psychoactive drugs can be so difficult. There are so many confounding variables that it's very difficult to know what is causing an effect.

Yeah, just wait - ten years from now some organic chemist will be thinking about some weird nonsensical reaction like that and, that'll be the story of how Ultra-PCP was first discovered and synthesized.

But only if your dealer is male.

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

#159

Post by nonbel »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #136
raverbashing wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then it's outright fraud to present your results as reliable when there's radically uncontrolled variables that dominate the results.

This is also naive. In that case you won't be able to publish your results in prestigious journals and your career will die out.

That said, you do learn not to act 100% confident. You need to say "This suggests that" instead of "This proves that", etc.

Anyway, the solution to reliable data is simple: Have multiple competing groups try to repeat the work as closely as possible.

Now that you have something to hang your hat on, you come up with some theory/model to explain the phenomenon. Even better, come up with multiple competing such models. From these you deduce some precise prediction that is checked against future data.

All of this was well known a few generations ago...

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

#160

Post by mabbo »

barking wrote: post #75

Someone I know used to have to get a blood test every week. One of the regular testers used to hurt him, the other didn't. I'm sure it affected to the stress of the visits which operator was waiting for him. With a small sample of people doing the injecting it's hard to eliminate the effect of operator technique.

So, didn't read the article then? They accounted for that in multiple ways.
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