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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.
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.
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."
I suspect that the animals *expect* to be tortured when males are around, so they steel themselves against it and thus feel pain less. However, when females are administering the pain, it is unexpected, and thus more intense.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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"
"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.
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. :)
As a married man, I agree.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
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...