SEX

[Drolefille]

Yes there's a science whether it be biological or sociological, and no we don't completely
understand it yet.

Pheremones are also sort of up in the air as far as how much they effect humans.

Your information on mice genes is sort of misleading, similar is not the same.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Yes there's a science whether it be biological or sociological, and no we don't completely
understand it yet.

Pheremones are also sort of up in the air as far as how much they effect humans.

Your information on mice genes is sort of misleading, similar is not the same.

Well, as far as pheromones are concerned the idea that the opposite sex responds to specific odors and chemicals has led to sprays that can be purchased in some stores and on the internet. Of course at this point there's little evidence that such products work, so I agree here.

Drolefille, mice have been used for biomedical research for more than a century now. Even with the advent of increasingly sophisticated genetic engineering techniques and more powerful computer technology, mice have actually become stand ins for humans upon which it seems every imaginable disease or condition is being studied, along with compounds to treat them. Hardly a week goes by without some new findings about heart disease, cancer, obesity, anxiety ect ect. From the beginning, these studies are all based on mouse models. By some estimates 25 million mice are used in medical research each year. I'm not saying mice are always the main source. Sometimes it depends on the study. Yeast, worms, fruit flies and even computer models all offer excellent insight into the workings of cell biology. We use mice a lot in school because they make better tools to study the immune, endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular, skeletal, and other physiological systems of humans and in my case, other mammals. Mice get many of the same diseases that humans do, rather it be cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, glaucoma, and to top it off, they even develop anxiety and aggressive behavior.

I know similar is not the same which is why I said 99% rather than 100%. I hardly think my information on mice is misleading at all.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Drolefille, mice have been used for biomedical research for more than a century now. Even with the advent of increasingly sophisticated genetic engineering techniques and more powerful computer technology, mice have actually become stand ins for humans upon which it seems every imaginable disease or condition is being studied, along with compounds to treat them. Hardly a week goes by without some new findings about heart disease, cancer, obesity, anxiety ect ect. From the beginning, these studies are all based on mouse models. By some estimates 25 million mice are used in medical research each year.

These studies use "mouse models" for the following reasons (in this order):

-Cost
-Lessened "noise" in the data due to outside factors, whether they be genetic interference, antibodies, etc. (these are Knockout mice, remember)
-Ethical considerations (it's hard to use humans)

The following has never, ever been a consideration in mice studies:

-Proximity to human research/similarity to the human body (in literal comparison with other animals; this may be true when compared with yeast, not so much with monkeys)

I'm saying this to provide context to my responses to your later points.

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I'm not saying mice are always the main source. Sometimes it depends on the study. Yeast, worms, fruit flies and even computer models all offer excellent insight into the workings of cell biology. We use mice a lot in school because they make better tools to study the immune, endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular, skeletal, and other physiological systems of humans and in my case, other mammals. Mice get many of the same diseases that humans do, rather it be cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, glaucoma, and to top it off, they even develop anxiety and aggressive behavior.

You're mixing your terms here. Cell biology is not similar to complex inter-system diagnoses of complex behavioral patterns (such as pheromonal interactions, or the existence of something as nebulous as "attraction"). Mice can be subject to diseases similar to humans, but that is simply because they are mammals - it is not some great, lucky advantage to the knockout mouse.

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I know similar is not the same which is why I said 99% rather than 100%. I hardly think my information on mice is misleading at all.

Mouse studies can indeed be misleading, by their nature. Let's take a look, again, at the reasons for using mice:

Reason 1: Cost
-These studies can be replicated, improving their utility - however, the assays are cheap and can be run with few controls, leading to a large number of trials (and outliers) that people then post on places such as message boards as gospel (for example).

Reason 2: Lack of interference (the "knockout" quality)
-This is both the best and worst part about lab studies on mice - the lack of interference is the very reason why the assays do not have any direct applicability to humans. The "noise" in the data may actually be the very interaction that prevents human use of a particularly novel or innovative observation - read up on gene therapy and mouse studies for more information on how this can be a massive problem. Just in the examples you've used, the fact that pheromones influence mice (which have little to no sociological influences as we would know them) has almost no applicability to a complex thinking organism that is subject to hundreds of outside factors (including choice). The "noise" avoided through mouse assays is actually the "signal" we need to root out.

Reason 3: Ethical considerations
-Ideally, this should not apply to an attraction study.

So the bottom line: mouse studies can be quite misleading, and should not be considered "99%" at anything except for the direct application to mice, or as an object lesson to drive future research toward its empirical end.

The moral? We can talk about bowerbirds and compare behavior, but we fall prey to logical fallacies very rapidly in these connections. Particularly, sociological connections between man and other animals is often colored by selection and confirmation bias - is buying a nice car really similar to collecting pretty things? If so, why aren't we comparing females wearing low-cut tops to female bowerbirds? Are we seeing what we want to see out of the extraordinarily simple mating methods of mice versus humans?

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

These studies use "mouse models" for the following reasons (in this order):

-Cost
-Lessened "noise" in the data due to outside factors, whether they be genetic interference, antibodies, etc. (these are Knockout mice, remember)
-Ethical considerations (it's hard to use humans)

The following has never, ever been a consideration in mice studies:

-Proximity to human research/similarity to the human body (in literal comparison with other animals; this may be true when compared with yeast, not so much with monkeys)

I'm saying this to provide context to my responses to your later points.



You're mixing your terms here. Cell biology is not similar to complex inter-system diagnoses of complex behavioral patterns (such as pheromonal interactions, or the existence of something as nebulous as "attraction"). Mice can be subject to diseases similar to humans, but that is simply because they are mammals - it is not some great, lucky advantage to the knockout mouse.



Mouse studies can indeed be misleading, by their nature. Let's take a look, again, at the reasons for using mice:

Reason 1: Cost
-These studies can be replicated, improving their utility - however, the assays are cheap and can be run with few controls, leading to a large number of trials (and outliers) that people then post on places such as message boards as gospel (for example).

Reason 2: Lack of interference (the "knockout" quality)
-This is both the best and worst part about lab studies on mice - the lack of interference is the very reason why the assays do not have any direct applicability to humans. The "noise" in the data may actually be the very interaction that prevents human use of a particularly novel or innovative observation - read up on gene therapy and mouse studies for more information on how this can be a massive problem. Just in the examples you've used, the fact that pheromones influence mice (which have little to no sociological influences as we would know them) has almost no applicability to a complex thinking organism that is subject to hundreds of outside factors (including choice). The "noise" avoided through mouse assays is actually the "signal" we need to root out.

Reason 3: Ethical considerations
-Ideally, this should not apply to an attraction study.

So the bottom line: mouse studies can be quite misleading, and should not be considered "99%" at anything except for the direct application to mice, or as an object lesson to drive future research toward its empirical end.

The moral? We can talk about bowerbirds and compare behavior, but we fall prey to logical fallacies very rapidly in these connections. Particularly, sociological connections between man and other animals is often colored by selection and confirmation bias - is buying a nice car really similar to collecting pretty things? If so, why aren't we comparing females wearing low-cut tops to female bowerbirds? Are we seeing what we want to see out of the extraordinarily simple mating methods of mice versus humans?

KSig RC I agree with what you said about cost. I'm not saying mouse studies are exactly accurate. I just said that human genes share a comparable version in the mouse, and many of them "appear" to be in the same order in our chromosome. I didn't say they "are" in the same order. I wasn't mixing cell biology with behavioral patterns. I was responding to why I don't think mice studies are totally inaccurate. I already said that the pheromones are not yet known in humans.

I agree with some of the things you mentioned, but mice were used early on because highspeed computers and scanning electron microscopes didn't exist 100 years ago. Other organisms or cultured cell lines can be better models for some purposes. It really depends on the question being asked. That dictates the best model to use. Though mice are stand ins in some studies, they are still not a true substitute for humans. Treatments that work one way in mice can't always predict the same outcome in people. I'm aware of that, but we use them because of some similarities. Scientist constantly strive to create mice that more closely resemble human physiology. Nowhere is there a greater problem than in immunology research. Though we have many afflictions in common, I agree, mice have not evolved with a susceptiblity to many of the diseases that affect humans. Like HIV for example. To further complicate such research, the immune system involves many organs and systems throughout the body.

Consequently, understanding the genentics of the immune system isn't just a matter of inserting a gene into a mouse and waiting to see what happens. We must instead learn how genes behave as part of a complex network. It's also not trivial to simply transplant human cells into a mouse. You make great points, but they do make great models for studying humans and other mammals.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Consequently, understanding the genentics of the immune system isn't just a matter of inserting a gene into a mouse and waiting to see what happens. We must instead learn how genes behave as part of a complex network. It's also not trivial to simply transplant human cells into a mouse. You make great points, but they do make great models for studying humans and other mammals.

I really don't think you read anything I wrote - it's almost as if you simply regurgitated some notes from a class you took last semester, and I'm not sure why . . . perhaps I was unclear (I've been known to have that problem), so I'll reiterate, and hopefully not come off as a jerk or anything:

Mice do not, in fact, make great models for studying humans. Mice make acceptable models when conditions dictate a certain kind of assay or a certain "scale" is all that is available.

This is easy to prove, by counting the number of FDA approvals that have happened because of mouse studies (or, in a rather less snarky fashion, the number of failed attempts that were deemed a potential success after animal trials), but that's neither here nor there.

Running out the "mice use pheromones and ultrasound signals" line, similar to using peacock feathers or gay gorillas, has a strong chance of confirmation bias - Occam's Razor here. It's a fun thought experiment, but I think you're carrying it too far - it may be that I'm more skeptical, but I also may simply have more experience or a more realistic view.

I think you're too trusting of scientific findings that are of low real-world utility, and far too trusting of theoretical connections between animal sociology/mating behavior and human behavior, and I think this is connected to a misunderstanding of how to use research such as mouse studies. See: the mouse tar-painting studies for a great example of how to use mouse research - it even has epidemiological connections, so the complexity is much higher than usual.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

I really don't think you read anything I wrote - it's almost as if you simply regurgitated some notes from a class you took last semester, and I'm not sure why . . . perhaps I was unclear (I've been known to have that problem), so I'll reiterate, and hopefully not come off as a jerk or anything:

Mice do not, in fact, make great models for studying humans. Mice make acceptable models when conditions dictate a certain kind of assay or a certain "scale" is all that is available.

This is easy to prove, by counting the number of FDA approvals that have happened because of mouse studies (or, in a rather less snarky fashion, the number of failed attempts that were deemed a potential success after animal trials), but that's neither here nor there.

Running out the "mice use pheromones and ultrasound signals" line, similar to using peacock feathers or gay gorillas, has a strong chance of confirmation bias - Occam's Razor here. It's a fun thought experiment, but I think you're carrying it too far - it may be that I'm more skeptical, but I also may simply have more experience or a more realistic view.

I think you're too trusting of scientific findings that are of low real-world utility, and far too trusting of theoretical connections between animal sociology/mating behavior and human behavior, and I think this is connected to a misunderstanding of how to use research such as mouse studies. See: the mouse tar-painting studies for a great example of how to use mouse research - it even has epidemiological connections, so the complexity is much higher than usual.

KSig RC, I did read what you said. I know humans are far more complex than other mammals, but this is all we have to go on right now. My points aren't all the way accurate. I think you're making great points, but yours aren't all together accurate either. As far as failed attempts, that's true. What I said isn't a line. It may be true. You don't have the facts and neither do I, which is why I asked is there science to sexual attraction. I just wanted other opinions. If you think you're being skeptical, that's o.k. I never said you had to agree with me.

Thanks for the insight.

ETA: So what if I took notes in lab and followed them.