Paradigmatic mice

 In a fine article, researchers describe the optimal temperature for mice in nature and the way lower ambient temperatures common in research buildings alter their behavior (the mice have to eat about 30% more in order to generate the necessary body heat. Of course, the convenience of not working in a steam bath (mice apparently prefer 30 C - 86 F but become feisty when warm) for the lab staff probably effects the results of the experiments, unless the experiments are supposed to be done on cold mice.  Seems like a simple thing and the intervention is simple as well, just provide some material for the mice to build a nest.  So maybe folks will start, so they can have a better idea of how their interventions actually affect mice.  Maybe some failed drugs, for example, become viable again.  Oh, and a few viable ones end up 86'd.

Of course, that leaves us with the inverted time structure, meaning mice are noctural, but we wake them up during the day to do our work.  Even this article describes their lighting conditions to be 14/10 (light and dark).  Hmmm.  Single major regulator of every biological function is light.  What kind, how much and when.  So think of all the drugs that worked so well in mice (who were given those drugs mostly during the daylight hours, which is sleep time for mice) and not so well in humans (who were given them during the waking hours for humans).  The more central a practice is to reproducing the basic assumptions of the practitioners, the less likely it is to be changed, obviously.  And research science must first reproduce the assumptions and then it can proceed.  But only then.  Which is why we have had 50 years or more of incrementalism is science.  People even expect it "adding to the knowledge base."  Maybe it is time for a little creative destruction.  At least we'd have happier mice....


http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032799