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The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

nature.com

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Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#91

Post by grawprog »

wongarsu wrote: post #7
arduanika wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including more funding for larger studies You won't find any experts to disagree with you on this part.

In many cases it's scientists who decide if existing funding is used on many small studies or few large ones, and which studies in particular. In that sense it is important to evaluate if maybe having fewer studies with better statistical significance would be better.

>In many cases it's scientists who decide if existing funding is used on many small studies or few large ones, and which studies in particular.

In my experience it works out more like, scientists make their studies as big as funding will allow for while tracking and justifying every single expenditure to your grant providers who can withdraw funding if they're not happy with the way their money's being used.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#92

Post by fearhugs »

wongarsu wrote: post #7
arduanika wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including more funding for larger studies You won't find any experts to disagree with you on this part.

In many cases it's scientists who decide if existing funding is used on many small studies or few large ones, and which studies in particular. In that sense it is important to evaluate if maybe having fewer studies with better statistical significance would be better.

> better statistical significance

I can tell from your comment that you understand this already but we should avoid talking about improving statistical significance when what we really mean is reducing the sampling error or the systematic effects---which would of course actually reduce the significance if the hypothesis is incorrect.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#93

Post by fifnir »

mcv wrote: post #74
saagarjha wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much of the animal kingdom has the same issue of painful childbirth Do they? As far as I was aware, humans have a uniquely awkward childbirth due to our cranial size.

Not only that. No other animal menstruates quite like humans do either; there's been an arms race between the placenta and the womb, and rather than a safe place to protect the fetus, the womb is more of a safe place to isolate the fetus and manage its access to the mother's resources while keeping the mother safe. Human pregnancy is messed up beyond the obvious issue of squeezing our large brain through out narrow r…

> an arms race between the placenta and the womb, and rather than a safe place to protect the fetus, the womb is more of a safe place to isolate the fetus and manage its access to the mother's resources while keeping the mother safe.

I don't see anything human-specific here, this would have been true for all placental animals no?

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#94

Post by [deleted] »

elil17 wrote: post #90

Obviously these things are highly individual, but my personal experience totally aligns with this article. I’m a transgender woman and when I started taking estrogen my pain tolerance increased noticeably over the course of about a month. Stubbing my toe just doesn’t bother me like it used to

[deleted]

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#95

Post by visarga »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #70
chroma wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, but only because from a utilitarian standpoint, using animals for research purposes is not even a drop in the bucket. Humanity slaughters billions of animals each year just because they're tasty. At least the research animals have some benefit beyond a single person's satiation. I do wonder how long it will be before people start vandalizing statues of historical figures because they ate meat.

>> Humanity slaughters billions of animals each year just because they're tasty. It's very likely that people find meat tasty because it's nutritious, just as we find sugar and plant fats tasty. Your comment makes it sound as if eating meat is some kind of indulgence, like eating sweets. Meat is a rich source of protein and energy. We don't need any more justification than that to want to eat other animals. There are…

I used to avoid eating meat for ethical reasons for a period of about 12 years. I compensated by eating lots of carbs, and gained about 20Kg. After that I decided to lose weight using protein based diet and now I am much better, close to my ideal weight.

I'd say avoiding meat could have some health risks.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#96

Post by dTal »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #87
seventhtiger wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not arguing that the line should be drawn somewhere else. You're arguing that there is no line. So let's take it all the way. What makes the life of a lab mouse more valuable than the life of a single cell of yeast? I think answers about awareness and capability just rationalize the fact that intuitively some life forms are more sympathetic to us than others. We will draw the line at some level of sympathy, bu…

And that's basically the same answer you'd get about slavery from a slave owner. I don't think it is a good argument.

Nevertheless, it's probably true. It's wishful thinking to hope that morality can be put on any firmer ground than "what humans intuitively feel, as a consequence of millions of years of ultimately self-centred evolution". The moment your more-perfect moral framework disagrees with intuition, it will be discarded.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#97

Post by foldr »

insickness wrote: post #84
jdavis703 wrote: post #2

The article writes that in 2016 the “National Institutes of Health (NIH) made it a requirement for grant applicants to justify their choice of the sex of animals used in experiments.” I can only imagine that some people took this as yet another example of political correctness creeping in to the public sphere. Hopefully the results from this study helps to bolster more scientific studies using diverse populations (in…

> another example of political correctness It's also the opposite. There's a strain of far left ideology that claims men and women are mentally identical, despite much scientific evidence to the contrary. If they were identical, studies on both genders would be unnecessary.

>There's a strain of far left ideology that claims men and women are mentally identical

I've never seen anyone actually claim this. Often, people on the right want people on the left to be claiming this because it would be easy to refute. But in fact what people on the left are usually doing is expressing skepticism that various aspects of the status quo (such as the distribution of genders in various professions) are explained primarily by the - typically small - average cognitive differences between men and women.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#98

Post by Nasrudith »

kranner wrote: post #44
chroma wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, but only because from a utilitarian standpoint, using animals for research purposes is not even a drop in the bucket. Humanity slaughters billions of animals each year just because they're tasty. At least the research animals have some benefit beyond a single person's satiation. I do wonder how long it will be before people start vandalizing statues of historical figures because they ate meat.

But why do you think attitudes to slaughtering would not change over time?

Well anyone reasonable will recognize knowledge just not being the better alternatives like meat growth culture not being available.

They might eyeroll at the "obvious" of "smoke is bad for your lungs, don't mix waste disposal and drinking water" not being able to do something hard isn't reasonable - we might grimace at amputations for gangrene but without suitable antibiotics.

If anything they would judge those who don't adopt when it becomes viable.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#99

Post by alsetmusic »

stevekemp wrote: post #32
jgibson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eye colour has a lot to do with how much light your retinas let in, iirc. Would this explain your sensitivity?

I'm not sure of a relationship there, but I recall reading reports for a long time that red-heads felt less pain than other people - as a red-head this amuses me, but I have no personal data to share. Random source is random: http://sciencenordic.com/redheads-feel-different-kind-pain

My dentist told me that people with red hair are less susceptible to the effects of novicane. I have red in my beard and always need a second injection when getting drilled. She said this is the cause.

Re: The sexes don’t feel pain the same way

#100

Post by earthboundkid »

Reporting this kind of stuff without drawing the bell curves should be criminal. Duh, the curves mostly overlap, but maybe they have slightly different peak heights or median locations. If you're not drawing the curves, you're deliberately misleading your readers and wasting everyone's time.
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