Male Scent Molecules May Be Compromising Biomedical Research 274
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."
Also, this means... (Score:5, Funny)
No more need to wear deodorant. My naturally musky smell will make everyone feel more at ease.
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Informative)
No more need to wear deodorant. My naturally musky smell will make everyone feel more at ease.
Unfortunately, the summary is incorrect. The article says the mice are more stressed with males around.
Wrong on stress, right on pain... (Score:2)
Either way, we make mice feel nice.
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No, your reading comprehension sucks and the summary is correct. From the end of the fourth paragraph in the fucking article (emphasis mine):
The rodents showed significantly fewer signs of pain (an average of a 36% lower score on the grimace scale) when a male researcher was in the room than when a female researcher—or no researcher at all—was there.
Read as far as the sixth paragraph.
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stress and lack of pain are both associated with adrenaline, so I'd say that's a totally plausible thing.
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One could test for ACTH, another hormone that is often co-morbid with adrenaline as a stress reaction. That would seal the deal: animals are in fear, stressed, and are ready for men to do bad things to them. Women are comparatively harmless, as a result, in terms of invoking stress, were both adrenal and ACTH products present. Ought to be an easy test.
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If nature were perfect we wouldn't be here.
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why are you confusing stress with showing pain?
Anyway, this is a better quote:
" 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."
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He was quoting:
My naturally musky smell will make everyone feel more at ease.
Stress is the opposite of at ease.
I agree that the summary was not really incorrect though, though I think it could have included the sentence you quoted.
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The summary is correct about reduced pain. It's backwards about stress level:
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.
vs.
The rodents are also less stressed out.
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Informative)
I found plain old alcohol superior to deodorant in every way.
Amazing stuff. It strips the built up oils and wax on the hair off and kills the bacteria too.
I found a lot of deodorants actually made me smell worse when they broke down.
Only down side is on a hot day- I might have to do this again every six hours. But deodorant doesn't even last six hours on me.
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Funny)
How much do you have to drink to get this effect?
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Funny)
It varies but it also improves my dancing and my kung fu skills.
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I have realized I play pool very well when I am drunk, and very poorly when sober.
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That's called modal learning and it's a real thing, but it's also likely your over-estimating your skill when drunk (most of us do). Modal learning associated with drink is also seen in bowlers and golfers.
Re:Also, this means... (Score:5, Informative)
State specific or dependent memory is what you are looking for, which strangely enough has to do with the state of mind you're in.
Weird how words work like that, eh?
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State Dependent Memory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
If you learn to play while drunk you improve your skills while drunk but not while sober.
In order to be good while sober you need to learn while sober.
The fun part is that you learn lots of things while in different states.
You learn to do something only while heavily caffeinated/drunk/high? Then it only comes to you easily while you are caffeinated, drunk or high...
Caffeine and coding.
Drink and darts.
Rx: two pints Q.I.D., per os..... (Score:2)
I think frequency would be slightly more important here...you would want to maintain a suitable blood-alcohal level constantly, but then you could always spike it higher for those pesky 'dealing with the public' occasions. ;-)
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Citric acid works even better. I can go for two to three days without reapplying my citric acid solution and have done so for the past three years.
If you search online, you'll encounter all kinds of 'rub lemons under your armpits' and comparable tips. The more scientific approach is of course to just buy a kilo of crystallized citric acid for a few euro's and then mix it with water until you reach a pH-level slightly above 2.0 (buy some cheap indicator paper). Put it in a spray bottle and there you go.
You w
Re:interesting how so many (Score:5, Funny)
The labs have to stop using gay rats.
Re:interesting how so many (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Molecules shmolecules (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your assuming that it's a smell that can be washed off, the implication of the article is the way to get rid of the smell is to cut off your testicles.
Might be interesting to test if females evoke an effect depending on where they are in their estrous cycle, seeing that it is more of a pheromonal thing than an odor thing.
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There's a huge bias towards using exclusively male mice in many types of research, and the issue of higher variance in female rodent behavior (due to estrous cycle issues, among others) is well known (see eg: pdf [genderinscience.org]).
There are also related problems more generally with stress and over-training in neuroscience. Experienced investigators are able to produce a much less stressful working environment for animals, so they tend to get different results from neophyte investigators even when following the same protocol
Captain Obvoius (Score:5, Funny)
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...though in fact, it's men that do. (The summary is wrong.)
Re:Captain Obvoius (Score:5, Funny)
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I think you grossly underestimate how low the standards of many men actually are. The requirements are pretty much just a pulse, and even that has some wiggle room.
A theory easily verified by a trip to your local Wal-Mart.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Beauty is just a light switch away. Best part; in total darkness, I'm as handsome as she is beautiful.
Pardon me miss: Did you know that I look just like Brad Pitt in total darkness?
Re:Captain Obvoius (Score:5, Funny)
Sex in the dark is boring.
Never thought I'd see sex and boring in the same sentence on slashdot.
36% less pain (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Animal studies are usually pretty messy even if you're not measuring behavior. Everyone who works with animals knows this. It's also more expensive. If you're testin
Re:36% less pain (Score:5, Informative)
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The problem with pain scales is that sometimes they don't include all the numbers [blogspot.ie].
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I usually say "if 10 is the worst pain I've ever felt, you better be getting out the narcotics at 4 because I've been on fire and peeled like a banana in hydro-therapy!"
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What gender were the emotion-scorers?
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Sensations are always conscious. The concept of an unconscious sensation doesn't make sense, and would make anaesthesia torture rather than relief.
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We actually have a lot of data that confirms that humans don't feel pain while they are unconscious: the reaction you get from cutting them with a scalpel. If you cut someone who is conscious, their stress level increases, they pull away from the source of pain, they report the sensation of being in pain, and they react in various other manners. When you cut someone who is unconscious, their stress level does not increase (heart rate etc.), they don't pull away from the source of pain, they don't report pai
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There are some people who had the muscle relaxant part of the anaesthetic, but not enough of the gas that makes them go unconscious. Then they very definitely could feel pain.
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So people not under an anesthesia feel pain? Well done.
Re:36% less pain (Score:4, Informative)
When someone is cut who is merely paralyzed, yes, stress levels can increase, and this is then taken by the anaesthesiologist as a sign of consciousness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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we can measure the response' which has been done.
i.e. does your brain react, does your breathing change, etc..
And there is plenty of data.
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First, yes, I have never felt pain while dreaming. Second, I think when you're dreaming you're neither conscious nor unconscious, but exhibit aspects of both. Dreaming is different from being wide awake, but it's also different from being under anaesthesia. Meditative states and altered states of consciousness brought about by hallucinogens or psychosis are similarly difficult to place firmly in either category. Maybe it would help to see dreaming as "being in a certain mental state while you are asleep" th
pain in your dreams (Score:2)
I've never felt pain while dreaming. that sounds like a weird experience!
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I have a dog with _terrible_ gas. When she sleeps in the bedroom I sometimes dream I'm trapped in a sewage treatment plant.
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How do you know if you felt pain or not if you don't remember when you regain consciousness?
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Punchline: Heineken makes my pussy hurt.
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All of you socialist leaning liberals take note, your average American sees socialized medicine as "Everybody stuck with an Army or VA Doctor". I'm actually surprised that the congress-criters that voted for Obamacare weren't tarred and feathered after they were thrown out of office.
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And, what gender were the measurers?
Depends on the male? (Score:3)
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."
Why Male? (Score:3)
Maybe the males are all neutral and the women are just nagging the animals to perform and causing too much stress!?
Re:Why Male? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why Male? (Score:5, Funny)
As a married man, I agree.
Actually MORE stressed. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Actually MORE stressed. (Score:5, Funny)
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another year of editors who don't edit
Well, that'll go nicely with another year of commentators who don't read the articles (and sometimes don't even get all the way through the headline).
Statistical significance (Score:2)
Can't find the article available for online reading, beyond http://www.nature.com/nmeth/jo... [nature.com]
But one wonders about the sample size and the statistical significance of the experiments.
Motives (Score:2)
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And I thought it was only the social sciences who had so many variables that they simply ignored 99.99% of them: and couldn't even identify the rest.
Now it starts! Ob: H2G2 (Score:2)
"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
Quantifying pain in mice (Score:5, Informative)
"The Rat Grimace Scale: A partially automated method for quantifying pain in the laboratory rat via facial expressions" http://www.molecularpain.com/c... [molecularpain.com]
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... [wikipedia.org])
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]
I wonder what methods are typically used? Do researchers videorecord grimacing rats? That seems rather tedious and subjective.
Only compromised if you're doing bad science (Score:3)
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.
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No, if I try to reproduce your study, but your lab had a male animal handler and mine didn't, I may get different results.
"Presence of male human" was not previously thought to be something that had to be controlled for.
Yes it will. Your 9 becomes a 6 with males there. (Score:2)
Not in the cases where you measure LEVELS of sensitivity to pain in some way.
Which basically includes every endurance or stress test.
They are "zeroed out" to a higher level.
Now your mice endure longer or don't start reacting as soon as they should have. So all your results are off by a third.
On top of that, someone tries to repeat your experiment - and their mice react differently.
There goes the peer review.
And that's just the pain. What else is influenced by inducing more stress?
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I'm betting that this poster is a woman assuming that scent molecules can be controlled for by double-blind when it's going to be difficult controlling the dose.
For instance; We've all known scientifically since the days of sailing that women are just bad luck.
Laugh (Score:2)
Is this why females are more irritating in general?
Quantum Uncertainty (Score:5, Funny)
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. :)
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These days, her opinion prevails mainly because of the implied threat of her leaving and taking all his life's earning with her, hangs over his head. We have the ivy league left-wing indoctrinated feminist judges to thank for that (both male and female). For Great (Social) Justice.
Two ways to look at it (Score:2)
What's the baseline stress level? It would answer the question: do men cause 33% more stress or do women aleviate 33% stress? And I call bullshit on it anyway because I can tell you who stresses me out the most in order: my mom, my grandma, my sisters and my wife.
Male odor could explain a lot (Score:2)
...like why women don't enter scientific fields...
Easy explaination (Score:3)
It's the drill instructor or coach attitude that they pick up.
"Come on, mouse! Play through the pain! Gimme twenty more pushups!"
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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YouTube finally jumps the shark. I have to watch an advertisement before I can watch the cheese advertisement.
looool (Score:3)
And so are the male scientists, depending on what time of the month it is.
Oh there you go (Score:2)
Aha, so next time you're doing poorly on a math exam, tell the teacher that you need all the males to leave.
Tests on men affected by the presence of a woman (Score:2)
Re:Written by a Woman? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Written by a Woman? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Written by a Woman? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Written by a Woman? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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There already is body of research about various hormonal reactions in mice that are sex specific. So, likely, yes.
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mice that are sex specific
Who can tell in this crazy day and age.
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While it's true that it's difficult to ask a mouse about its gender, sexing them isn't that hard.
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Govt isn't funded by taxes, in the same way that banks aren't funded by deposits. Banks' loans (created out of nothing) are their assets. So the Fed expands its balance sheet by creating an asset, which funds the government, and keeps the asset on its books forever. Zero-cost govt funding. Taxes aren't necessary, a relic of a feudal era.
Re:Showing pain, not feeling pain (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
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So, that sounds impressive, but at most you patch clamps neurons, not nerves, and the relationship between activity nociceptive neurons and perceived pain is complex. Even were you able to record the activity of all nociceptive sensory neurons responding to the stimulus, you could not from that predict how the pain would be experienced in the brain, where the experiencing part is actually happening. (Heck, right now I'm working with sea slugs, that don't have brains, but instead just a number of ganglia, an
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Actually, I am laughing.
(Biomed, by the way, is one of the fields with great gender parity, but since previous generations - at least of mice - are in question, your point holds.)
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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."
Femal
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Because there aren't female predators?
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lioness hunt almost exclusively. Their are plenty of other examples besides that, but it was the first one to come to mind.
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Sarcasm.. fail.
I was being sarcastic to the original poster who said:
"Animals know that if they show weakness in front of a predator"
Looking at the data from these tests and the study, the poster is implying that predators are male.
Which is false in many species. i.e. anything that eats mice.
I keep rereading my post and really don't see how that could be read as anything but sarcastic in the context.
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The more likely explanation (at least I think so anyway) is that exclusively male hormones with no female hormones present, coupled with the fact that nearly all mammals conserve these olfactory signals, means that the same olfactory signals in a "Strongly competitive" mouse colony (reproductively competitive that is) are being expressed by the preponderantly male research scientists, which increases stress hormone levels in the mice, which chemically inhibits pain receptivity.
This makes sense, as a strongl
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You didn't know my last boss.
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Well, no, it suggests that a male one might well. (The summary is incorrect.)
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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.