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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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 matters if the effect size is dependent on temperature.

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