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Male Scent Molecules May Be Compromising Biomedical Research
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Scientists have found that mice feel 36% less pain when a male researcher is in the room, versus a female researcher. The rodents are also less stressed out. The effect appears to be due to scent molecules that male mammals (including humans, dogs, and cats) have been emitting for eons. The finding could help explain why some labs have trouble replicating the results of others, and it could cause a reevaluation of decades of animal experiments: everything from the effectiveness of experimental drugs to the ability of monkeys to do math. Male odor could even influence human clinical trials."
No more need to wear deodorant. My naturally musky smell will make everyone feel more at ease.
Maybe the male scientists need to shower more often...
Women are intimidating and cause stress. Film at 11.
What does a percent of lessened pain feel like? I can't even tell whether my throat hurts half as bad as it did yesterday or a fourth as bad, and that's from a first person perspective, the only perspective from which you actually have access to pain sensations.
I should also note that I'm not a mouse.
How do those little rodents feel when Richard Gere walks into the room?
Remember what the brown gerbil said to the white gerbil?
"You're new around here, aren't you."
No brain, no pain.
They controlled against no person present which had the same effect as female which means that it was the male odor that was the cause.
They also tested with scents from various male and female animals and the male scents still had the same effect.
Maybe the males are all neutral and the women are just nagging the animals to perform and causing too much stress!?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Did you bother to actually read the article?
The results were quite simple. No odor, or just female odor = 1 result. Male odor = another result.
Simple logic would then equate female odor = no effect (simply because the female odor had the same effect as no odor at all).
So therefore, the male odor was causing a change in the results of the experiment.
The summary writes:
The rodents are also less stressed out.
The article writes:
The male aroma ramped up their stress levels, which deadened the hurt.
Was this the daily "Find the inconsistency" test on slashdot? Did I win something?
"Further testing showed that the rodents exposed to male odors were actually feeling less pain, rather than simply hiding the pain they were in. The male aroma ramped up their stress levels, which deadened the hurt. “It’s really astounding that such a robust effect could have been missed for so many years,” Mogil says."
RTFA.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Further testing showed that the rodents exposed to male odors were actually feeling less pain, rather than simply hiding the pain they were in.
The article then continues to support your reason for less pain response. That the potential presence of a lone male predator is a threat and it is not safe spending excess time responding to minor injuries.
Also, the line right after the above quote indicates that the summary has it backward (as surprise to no one) about the part of test-rats getting stressed.
The male aroma ramped up their stress levels, which deadened the hurt.
This also indicates that lions figured out how to cheat the system.
Male: "Every one of those tasty herbivores gets so flighty when I get close."
Female: "Well, you're also scaring off the hyenas and other critters we don't want near the cubs. You stay here and act scary, I'll go get some dinner."
Apparently (as stated in TFA), UNACCOMPANIED male odor caused the mice to not be willing to show pain, but a strange male in company with a strange female didn't cause the mice to go all macho all of a sudden.
So, I wonder if male mice with female mice will show different effects than male mice alone?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings."
Do YOU feel manipulated?
Signed: A male (smelly) scientist
"The Rat Grimace Scale: A partially automated method for quantifying pain in the laboratory rat via facial expressions" http://www.molecularpain.com/c...
Here is another paper where the researches used a patch clamp to interface the spinal cord. (A patch clamp is a very low noise/high gain amplifier that can measure single cell ion channels, etc -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
I wonder what methods are typically used? Do researchers videorecord grimacing rats? That seems rather tedious and subjective.
This may be affecting experiments, but if you're designing your experiments correctly, it won't change your results. The "male in the room" effect should affect all animals the same.
You have a control set and a variable set of mice. The animal handlers should be the same for both, and they shouldn't know if at all possible which is which. Males on the staff will stress out the mice, okay, but they'll stress out both control and variable mice the same. Having a female undergrad handle the control cages and a male undergrad handle the variable mice you're using to try to prove your drug makes them hurt less is going to skew your results independent of gender scents.
Is this why females are more irritating in general?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The labs have to stop using gay rats.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Bzzt. Oh, so sorry. The correct response was "Wow, I was a total dumbass for not reading the article. My idiotic knee-jerk rejection of this study based on the first stupid thought to cross my mind was completely wrong. I apologize for being a know-nothing smart-ass and promise not to do it again." Better luck next time!
Rats react to women the same as if their was no observer?
Maybe we should she if women can observe things without changing states!
This would explain a lot of male confusion when women say two diametrically opposed things in the same sentence... They can just observe more quantum states than we can and can't understand why we cannot. :)
It's the drill instructor or coach attitude that they pick up.
"Come on, mouse! Play through the pain! Gimme twenty more pushups!"
Have gnu, will travel.
About as much as requiring that all veterinarians and their staff are male - cause we are basically walking painkiller for mammals.
Which includes humans, so just on the off chance that it does work...
But don't worry... From TFA:
"Placing a womanâ(TM)s T-shirt next to a manâ(TM)s T-shirt negated the impact."
Aaaand it just occurred to me that the negating effect of female smells is NOT the argument against "all male" animal or human clinics and hiring policies.
Damn. Hope that does not become a trend.
Is foregoing feeling 36% less pain really that big of price to pay to have sexy nurses and doctors?
And by sexy I mean women.
Not being sexist. Just being human male, hetero and honest.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"The rodents are also less stressed out"
And so are the male scientists, depending on what time of the month it is.
I know that when I have tests performed on me, the hotter the woman the more I'm affected. Now excuse me while I hunch forward while the hot nurse takes my blood.
Your comprehension of this article seems to be very different from mine.
The smell of males seems to make other mammals feel endangered, and in this state, they feel less pain. This is similar to how people under great stress (for other reasons than being in the presence of He-man) will ignore the pain from even serious injuries.
Now, if your goal is to make sure people around you are less bothered by pain, sure, share your smell with everyone. But if you would like to keep stress levels around you down, you should suppress your smell. It all depends on what your goal is.
As for those who 'cannot handle that information', you'd be surprised how often people confused those who cannot handle something, with those who are actually thinking over what they just learned, and considering the implications. There are times where inaction is worse than the the worst action. In the modern world, such situations are few and far between.
No good deed goes unpunished...