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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

> a variety of factors, including researchers’ and technicians’ comfort at those temperatures, have prevented anyone from changing the thermostat.

As long as the temperature is kept consistently cooler for both the experimental and control groups (and whatever other groups), it shouldn't matter, right? Seems to me the problem is the variation and the fact that it's not controlled.

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It depends on what is being studied and concluded. The Rat Park experiments come to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Just because it's consistent doesn't mean it's not impacting the outcomes in an important way.

But a warmer temperature could also be impacting outcomes, right? It seems to me that the temperature just needs to be both controlled and documented.

It would at least need to be tested at both, you can’t guarantee the cooler temp isn’t doing anything.

I think the point is, whatever the impact of cool or warm temperatures are, as long as it is the same in all the experiments it should not matter.

It matters if the effect size is dependent on temperature.

I have read hundreds of research papers, and I don't think I've ever seen one that described the temperature that the rat housing is kept at. It's definitely not something that's controlled for right now.

Oh, totally understood, that clearly ought to change!

My only point was, the article was framing this as an issue of scientist comfort, ie human researchers don't want to work in hot labs. I don't see why they should have to, at least in most cases.

We study rats because they're an inexpensive and ethical replacement for humans, with the assumption that some of the research will carry over to other mammals. It's harder for that work to translate over if we keep them in abnormal environments that affect their behavior or physiology.

Is it even possible not to "keep them in abnormal environments that affect their behavior or physiology"? Putting a rate in a cage alone is an abnormal environment for a rat.

The point is to reduce confounders as much as possible.

Not if the temperature has an effect on the intervention you are trying to study. Taken to an extreme, you obviously cannot house mice in a freezer and expect generalizable results.

it is very common to see publications such as "regulation of [gene1] expression by interaction with product of [gene2]"

followed by "temperature dependency of [gene2product] regulation of [gene1]"

absolute temperature of culture can confound you into negative results so you will never see the genes activity until the experiment is replicated with culturally disparate subjects. thats just being simple as well, there is normally a continuum of influences and its up to experiment to tease out the largest contributor[s] to the effect of interest

the absolute is also a problem. rats have a hibernative state this is a physiological response to temperature. The regulation of gene product expression has many factors, temperature being a common one at the biochemical level, and the whle organism physiological level. Hibernation or torpor is an exploitation of thermal dependency of regulation,providing on demand alternative physiological state.

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