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> “People have been making this assumption that we can use male mice to reliably make comparisons within and across experiments, but our data suggest that femal
by tgv 4y ago
> “People have been making this assumption that we can use male mice to reliably make comparisons within and across experiments, but our data suggest that female mice are more stable in terms of behavior despite the fact that they have the estrous cycle,” Datta said.
Isn't this quote mixing up two uses of "stable"? They stuck with male mice to be able to compare to other studies, not to reduce variability within the study (which should not be a goal in itself).
If this shows anything, it is that we know way too little about biological factors underlying behavior, and that variation in other factors (age is an obvious one, but there are also genes that affect this behavior) should be investigated too.
- sigmoid10 4y agoHe was actually referring to both aspects. It's all explained further down in the article: >Males also exhibited individuality of behavior, but they had more behavioral variation within a single mouse and between mice than females.
- Chris2048 4y agoHmm, what is "behavioral variation within a single mouse and between mice"? I get variation between mice, but is variation within a single mouse the range of behaviour?
- dopu 4y agoYes. Say today the mouse engages in 3 behaviors (groom, walk around edge of enclosure, then dart across it) but tomorrow spends the whole day huddled in the corner (1 behavior, not exhibited yesterday). That’s sort of what they mean by within mouse variability.
- altairprime 4y agoExpanding the article's scope from "we should study mice of both sexes" to boiling the ocean with "we should IDIC mice studies" doesn't help here. Invoking age makes researchers more resistant to accounting for female biology in their research, because it gives them a ready excuse to say "we can't afford the combinatorial matrix of sex and age, so we're just going to study healthy adult males". In a world of theoretically infinite resources, it absolutely makes sense to widen the scope of mice studies to include all possible variations of mice, by sex and by age and by genetics. In today's actual world, it does not.
- tgv 4y agoBut then I don't see why people are willing to draw conclusions from mouse studies in the first place, certainly not medical. They don't even generalize over all mice. If anyone still takes them more seriously than a mere hint, I can't see why they would criticize them for excluding females. This study at least doesn't show much difference, and many other factors are excluded anyway.