> This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch.
There is a very nice paralel to this. There was a study which suggested that the temperature of lab mice housing (which is roughly room temp) is too cold for mice. If they could they would turn the thermostate up. So they are in a constant state of low-key hypothermia, which might affect all kind of immunology and stress experiments.
Cold animals is the most obvious paralel in these two stories, but if we squint at it we can see that the paralel is that something which is done for the experimenter’s convenience might have unexpected distorting effect on results.
There is a very nice paralel to this. There was a study which suggested that the temperature of lab mice housing (which is roughly room temp) is too cold for mice. If they could they would turn the thermostate up. So they are in a constant state of low-key hypothermia, which might affect all kind of immunology and stress experiments.
Cold animals is the most obvious paralel in these two stories, but if we squint at it we can see that the paralel is that something which is done for the experimenter’s convenience might have unexpected distorting effect on results.