6 ms·

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 animal

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 (including more funding for larger studies that might be required for more statistical significance).

arduanika 8y ago
> including more funding for larger studies You won't find any experts to disagree with you on this part.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  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.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    >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.
  - fearhugs 8y ago
    > 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.
maps 8y ago
It is worth pointing out that the study discussed here was done in 2015, prior to the change. Hopefully the NIH change will get more researchers out of their standard patterns though.
insickness 8y ago
> 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.
- foldr 8y ago
  >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.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nabnob 8y ago
    I get into debates about this topic all the time. There are definitely people on the left who claim that sex isn't binary, and that the existence of intersex people somehow disproves the idea of male/female sexes.
    - foldr 8y ago
      That seems like a separate topic. The question at issue is whether people who can be clearly classified as "men" or "women" according to general consensus show some cognitive differences on average. I have not seen anyone deny this. In a similar way, one might argue that "races" don't really have any objective existence, and yet still acknowledge that e.g. African-Americans are less likely to go to college than Asian Americans. Such stats aren't invalidated by the lack of any objective biological definition of "race", or by the existence of some people with mixed African/Asian heritage, etc. etc.
    - 8y ago
Balgair 8y ago
For the interested: The NIH's change in requirements to include does/dams largely follows from the finding out of McGill [0] that showed male rats will change their pain tolerances in response to testosterone smells emitted by male researchers. That particular finding invalidated a LOT of pain research from a few decades past. There had been calls for a long time to include female rats in research, but the rodent estrus cycle is very difficult to deal with and control for, hence female absence from most rat studies. Bucks are very pheremonal and will also greatly change behavior when does are around, another confound to experiments. The McGill work was the straw that broke the camel's back and finally forced the change from the NIH. [0]https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/scent-man-235492 https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/scent-man-23549...
GuB-42 8y ago
Much to my dismay, it looks like it is indeed motivated by political correctness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4360141/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4360141/ But who cares if it leads to better research. The issue I have with it is that we are talking about animal studies. And asking scientists to justify the use of male vs female mice sound like asking physicists to justify the choice between spherical and cubic cows. A point of using mice is that experiments can be done easily and cheaply before moving on to more detailed research using more varied, more expensive animals, ending up with humans. Forcing scientists to compare male and female mice can lead to better research... on mice. But does it result in better research on humans is debatable (and debated in the paper I linked). After a quick read, what I find unfortunate is that the conclusion is supported more by political arguments than with hard data.

arduanika 8y ago

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

wongarsu 8y ago
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.
- grawprog 8y ago
  >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.
- fearhugs 8y ago
  > 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.

maps 8y ago

It is worth pointing out that the study discussed here was done in 2015, prior to the change. Hopefully the NIH change will get more researchers out of their standard patterns though.

insickness 8y ago

> 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.

foldr 8y ago
>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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nabnob 8y ago
  I get into debates about this topic all the time. There are definitely people on the left who claim that sex isn't binary, and that the existence of intersex people somehow disproves the idea of male/female sexes.
  - foldr 8y ago
    That seems like a separate topic. The question at issue is whether people who can be clearly classified as "men" or "women" according to general consensus show some cognitive differences on average. I have not seen anyone deny this. In a similar way, one might argue that "races" don't really have any objective existence, and yet still acknowledge that e.g. African-Americans are less likely to go to college than Asian Americans. Such stats aren't invalidated by the lack of any objective biological definition of "race", or by the existence of some people with mixed African/Asian heritage, etc. etc.
  - 8y ago

Balgair 8y ago

For the interested: The NIH's change in requirements to include does/dams largely follows from the finding out of McGill [0] that showed male rats will change their pain tolerances in response to testosterone smells emitted by male researchers. That particular finding invalidated a LOT of pain research from a few decades past. There had been calls for a long time to include female rats in research, but the rodent estrus cycle is very difficult to deal with and control for, hence female absence from most rat studies. Bucks are very pheremonal and will also greatly change behavior when does are around, another confound to experiments. The McGill work was the straw that broke the camel's back and finally forced the change from the NIH. [0]https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/scent-man-235492 https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/scent-man-23549...

GuB-42 8y ago

Much to my dismay, it looks like it is indeed motivated by political correctness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4360141/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4360141/ But who cares if it leads to better research. The issue I have with it is that we are talking about animal studies. And asking scientists to justify the use of male vs female mice sound like asking physicists to justify the choice between spherical and cubic cows. A point of using mice is that experiments can be done easily and cheaply before moving on to more detailed research using more varied, more expensive animals, ending up with humans. Forcing scientists to compare male and female mice can lead to better research... on mice. But does it result in better research on humans is debatable (and debated in the paper I linked). After a quick read, what I find unfortunate is that the conclusion is supported more by political arguments than with hard data.