Fake Mouse On Twitter Mocks Overgeneralized Scientific Research (twitter.com) 91
DevNull127 writes: Research scientist James Heathers is a postdoctoral research associate working on bio-signals and meta-science research at Northeastern University, with a PhD from the University of Sydney. He's also pretending to be a mouse on Twitter. And every tweet consists of the exact same two words...
Heathers retweets articles about scientific studies — usually articles with glossy photos and enticing headlines like "Exercise during pregnancy protects children from obesity, study finds." His tweets add the two crucial missing words. "In mice."
In this case a doctoral student at Washington State University measured a specific protein's level in the offspring of mice that performed 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every morning during pregnancy — and in regular mice. On the basis of that he recommended "that women — whether or not they are obese or have diabetes — exercise regularly during pregnancy because it benefits their children's metabolic health."
The name of the Twitter feed: JustSaysInMice.
Other mouse-based studies turning up on the Twitter feed:
Heathers retweets articles about scientific studies — usually articles with glossy photos and enticing headlines like "Exercise during pregnancy protects children from obesity, study finds." His tweets add the two crucial missing words. "In mice."
In this case a doctoral student at Washington State University measured a specific protein's level in the offspring of mice that performed 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every morning during pregnancy — and in regular mice. On the basis of that he recommended "that women — whether or not they are obese or have diabetes — exercise regularly during pregnancy because it benefits their children's metabolic health."
The name of the Twitter feed: JustSaysInMice.
Other mouse-based studies turning up on the Twitter feed:
- How Fatty Diets Stop the Brain From Saying 'No' To Food
- Reused Cooking Oil Ups Risk of Metastases In Breast Cancer Patients
- Keto Diet Not Effective, Causes Blood Sugar Problems In Women
- Growth Hormone Acts To Foil Weight Loss: Study
When you read those headlines, just remember to add those two words...
"In mice."
7 tweets! (Score:5, Insightful)
no idea. it's garbage tier.
Re:7 tweets! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: 7 tweets! (Score:1)
Garbage tier in mice.
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Re:Will this academic question climate 'scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate scientists don't typically use mouse models if that's what you were asking.
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As per TFS:
"Keto Diet Not Effective, Causes Blood Sugar Problems In Women" results in "Keto Diet Not Effective, Causes Blood Sugar Problems In Women In Mice".
How do women fit in mice?
7 tweets?! how did this get here? (Score:1)
Clearly it's AstroTurfing, but wow they paid too much to the wrong people.
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And remember, the belief in God is not backed by any evidence
I assume you mean evidence which, by today's standards, would be considered scientific. I've seen plenty of 21st-century evidence of God's existence that I consider reliable, but because it is not scientific, it is unreasonable for me to expect those who demand only scientific evidence to accept it, so I don't bother trying.
the historical record shows that its a creation of man. Superstitious nonsense.
I know enough about history to know that historical records, particularly those more than a few hundred years ago, are spotty. I also know that they can be un-reliable: Those who win
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You can't prove that Jesus isn't the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, either.
In principle, you could. Unfortunately the evidence of the FSM's sterilization at the hands of the Great Pasta Fork prior to reaching puberty has been lost to time.
Oh, I fixed your quotation marks for you.
BBQing Bibles causes death... Re:How come (Score:1)
... in mice ... who were in the BBQ pit with the Bible.
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Reminds Me of... (Score:3)
Reminds me of the fortune cookie game where you say "in bed" at the end.
Nicely sums up the problems with science-reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Everything has to be spectacular and groundbreaking and changing everything. Here is news: Most research is incremental or not directly applicable and the rest is almost never groundbreaking. Deal with it. This is a slow process and over-hyping results is a huge disservice to all of humanity.
Re:Nicely sums up the problems with science-report (Score:5, Insightful)
It also desensitizes people to truly important things. I feel that there would be a lot less backlash to things like climate change if they weren't force fed bullshit nonstop. Thanks in large part to useless science reporting, people believe that science is indecisive and incompetent. I still remembering wtf'ing about the back and forth "eggs are good" "eggs are bad" a couple decades ago.
IMO a reporter needs to have taken courses in stats and spend time doing actual research before being allowed to report it.
Re:Nicely sums up the problems with science-report (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nope. Academia is set up to produce *lots* of competent scientists, mostly because grad students and postdocs are cheap, highly skilled labor. About 1% of those get a faculty job somewhere. Some others marry someone with a good enough job that they can entertain their academic habit as a research associate or equivalent. Most of the rest head off to industry, often doing things that are tangentially, or not at all related to their training. But quite a few try to become science popularizers, writing blogs,
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Indeed. When everything is hyped, even scientists have a hard time separating hype from fact. It becomes excessively tiresome.
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When everything is hyped, even scientists have a hard time separating hype from fact. It becomes excessively tiresome, in mice
FTFY
Premature destruction of Earth causes stress ... (Score:1)
... in mice [bbc.co.uk].
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From what I understand, 99% of the mice experiments findings and results also apply to humans because our DNA is so similar. Is this wrong? How often does something affect mice differently than humans? [emphasis added]
Quite often actually.
As just one example, mice are rarely affected by what an AC contributes enough on /. to bother replying.
It's the research! (Score:4, Funny)
When I was in university decades ago, the headline then was, "study concludes laboratory research causes cancer in mice".
The root of the strory coming from paper after paper purporting consuming one thingbor anotber caused cancer. No, silly! It's the research, the lab lighting, the little cages and poking and proding that is giving mice cancer, not what they are consuming.
Nice to see the internet finally caught up and updated the joke for a new generation!
So ... (Score:2)
Applied to Slashdot today (Score:4, Funny)
Genetic distance (Score:3)
The last common ancestor between humans and mice lived 75 million years ago. As a comparison, the last common ancestor between cows and orcas lived 50 million years ago, but nobody would think it would be a good idea to use cow studies to determine what's best for an orca.
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The main point is that overly strong conclusions are drawn from bad mouse studies. Mouse studies are cheap, and combined with the need for publish or perish, we get daily exposure to crappy mouse studies.
This is like a drunk man who's lost his keys in the dark, and then goes to look for them under a street lamp down the road, just because there's more light there.
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The last common ancestor between humans and mice lived 75 million years ago. As a comparison, the last common ancestor between cows and orcas lived 50 million years ago, but nobody would think it would be a good idea to use cow studies to determine what's best for an orca.
There would certainly be stronger ethical concerns studying with many organisms more closely related; and mice share our omnivorous diet. (amongst other things). It's not perfect, but it's a good start.
Mice can cheaply be bred and kept in large numbers- and are a lot closer to us genetically than a fruit fly.
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This isn't a joke (the original article), it shows that most 'science' is a waste of time, and much of it is fraudulent.
No it doesn't. Data is data, and information is information. It's all useful, it just means that you shouldn't place TOO much stock in any theory or observation that hasn't been independantly verified yet. It doesn't mean that the science is useless.
If "product A" is shown to cause cancer, and then later retests disagree... that doesn't mean the original test was "wrong", it means, we need to look more into the methods used. Perhaps something else caused the cancer and by studying what went wrong we ca
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It's not a waste of time, nor fraudulent. There is a bit of that of course, but you have to realize that a single study is not meant to be "right." Lots of scientists don't get that either. An individual study is meant to test something within certain limits. For the vast majority of studies, those limits are set wide (making them narrow costs a lot of money) and are designed to indicate whether a particular direction is promising or not. If so, you're supposed to follow up with a bigger, better study. If
The new fortune cookie? (Score:2)
When you read those headlines, just remember to add those two words...
"In mice."
So, is this like the new fortune cookie rule? If anyone is still unfamiliar with the fortune cookie rule, you're supposed to add ", in bed" to the end of your fortune.
Now for any research article we're supposed to add ", in Mice" to the end.
Mine's not working. (Score:2)