These sorts of findings have convinced me that studies with any variation in the caretaker for rats (and maybe other animal models) are suspect. Maybe all of th

These sorts of findings have convinced me that studies with any variation in the caretaker for rats (and maybe other animal models) are suspect. Maybe all of them are suspect, because in my experience the vivariums that house the animals for studies like this are generally densely populated and multi-tenant. Sure, they may have extreme entry procedures - but in the end, your rat study is sitting in a lab adjacent to two other labs that are doing god-knows-what, and the positive-pressure air system for each lab can't be totally effective when you have study staff in and out through doorways. Entry to the floor usually means airlock-entry; entry between labs generally doesn't. I accidentally found myself in a position where I ended up going through decontamination chambers, donning a 'bunny suit', and doing the install for tech systems supporting rodent studies in a vivarium a few years back. Because of paranoia over pheromone contamination, I wasn't even allowed into the actual room with the rodents - I communicated with someone inside the study room while looking into the room via a window and directing them as they attached cables between systems. After that point, we had a functional wifi network in that general area of the vivarium and we never needed to send another 'techie' in again (we could just have the studies' operators do installs over video calls once we had a network).