Mouse models are imperfect, but they tell us quite a lot about humans. That's why we use them. Where they are weak, we adjust the experiment and the conclusions accordingly.
I apologize if I seem frustrated. In truth, I am. Comments like this lower the level of discourse, and it's frustrating.
Also, we don't use mouse models because they're great models. They're just cheap, reproducible, and relatively quick to scale. They seem to be poor models more often than they're not.
I agree that they're valuable, but there is also extreme over-reporting of results in mice, leading laypeople to make decisions in their lives based on those very early and/or extreme studies.
Mice models don't attract many rights protesters, the way other animals would, even though they are just as sentient and intelligent as humans, dogs, cats, horses, and whales.
Why don't animal rights protesters stick up for mice more? This experiment sounded like a horrific experience for the participants.
For the rest of us, the horrific experiments are theoretically in the service of reducing human suffering. A hundred mice to save a human seems like a fair trade (although the real ratio is unknowable).
What are you measuring or estimating in that calculus?
- mice don't live as long as humans (a dead human is more years of lost life than a dead mouse)
- mice don't mourn each other, and these mice couldn't anyway because they'll all be dead soon
- in nature, mice typically die violent deaths anyway, so lab mice usually aren't suffering worse than a wild mouse would
- mice don't get sick and suffer for years, becoming a burden to their family and society
- mice don't fear their premature deaths for months or years
I mean, I can go on and on. Knowledge of the past and future gives humans a significantly greater propensity for suffering than other animals.
If aliens from Tralfalmadore were to adopt the same values, they might choose to experiment on humans because
- humans don't live as long as Tralfalmadorians
- humans don't mourn each other the same way Tralfalmadorians do, and these humans couldn't anyway because they'll all be dead soon
- in nature, humans typically die violent deaths anyway, so lab humans aren't suffering worse than a wild human would
- humans don't get sick and suffer for as long as Tralfalmadorians do
- humans can't predict their expiry date like Tralfalmadorians can
Yes, that is fair. But we both know the comment went further than that.
While "... in mice!" can get a little jokey at times, the alternative is often a discussion that more or less assumes that the smallest of effects in any model are directly actionable information for the readers. It's not. Even with human studies, a single study is rarely enough to come to strong conclusions.
In an ideal world, sure, it's just a repetition of facts everybody knows because everybody read and understood the article before engaging in the discussion at all (even just reading). But that's unrealistic on multiple fronts.
Until that's a reasonable assumption, I'm more than happy to see some reminders of important facts in the comments. Even if it spawns the occasional joke.
Honest question: do you know the reason why they do this?
It is not done by accident.
No. The reason is to approximate long-term exposure. There are obviously (big!) problems with that, but we don't have a better way of "speeding up time".
You really should try to understand things before you attack them with tired caricatures of legitimate arguments.
I really can't answer more precisely than that without knowing what you consider to be a "good" model, and what you are interested in modeling. Perhaps a marginally more useful answer is that they can be _excellent_ metabolic and cellular models. It's a case of "if you know what your looking for, you can pick animal models that effectively have exactly what you're looking for". The "what", here, would be a metabolic pathway, for example.
My question was what percentage of results in mice generalize to humans?
To confirm I'm interpreting your answer directly. It depends on how the scientists use the tool. It is good at verifying certain aspects but not others.
Accuracy is very high when you are studying a metabolic pathway that is (near)identical in humans and in mice.
>To confirm I'm interpreting your answer directly. It depends on how the scientists use the tool. It is good at verifying certain aspects but not others.
Yes. More precisely: animal models are accurate when the metabolic machinery in humans is also found in the animal model.
His comment was crafted to do exactly that.
I have been guilty of this in the past, and try very hard not to do it now.
I don’t think it’s right for others to attempt to guilt trip and bully you into removing it.
When certain groups of people have a monopoly on the spread of information as well as the narrative accompanying it, then these “lower levels of discourse” are perfectly acceptable as a grassroots counter. You may be frustrated because it is a very effective counter. Mockery/jokes, even very innocent mockery (which rings very true, by the way) like the one in the comment you quoted, is one of the most effective means to fight back against authoritarianism et al.
Hence why many sites are banning or censoring comments that are “mean” or go against establishment opinion. Sorry but we don’t haven’t take what they give without pushing back a bit. We’re not going to just roll over and take it.
Sites have always had terms of service. If you're seeing them enforced more often, it's because we've reached the end of the laissez-faire enforcement experiment for several key large sites; they attempted to maximize what was allowed, and found they had facilitated an attempted coup in their headquarters country, which would not be in their best interests.
Also, you... think this just started after January of last year? And that everyone who thinks differently than the establishment idea of what is "right" is part of that group? Interesting. You only further my point.
The truth is, it has been happening for a while, but certainly sped itself up when the establishment realized that allowing people to freely spread ideas and opinions very likely resulted in that really mean tweeter winning, rather than the person they wanted to win, and that to ensure that the only ideas considered "correct" moving forward are allowed to propogate, that comments either needed to be disabled, or heavily regulated, by the very smart, very good people in Big Tech, who cried tears of frustration and anger after the Cheeto won. [0]
[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/google-vs-trump-leaked-video-reveal...
The end of his Presidency, though, is a different story.
Indeed, Twitter, upon being forced to decide whether their laxly-enforced TOS meant they'd have to kick a sitting President off their service or whether they would find a way to avoid that scenario, modified their TOS to allow him and his ilk to stay.
... and the consequences of that decision were that their CEO, four years later, got hauled in front of Congress to talk about what their communications service facilitated on January 6, 2021, and whether they should have done anything differently.
They tried their damnedest, they really did. They don't actually want to be some kind of benevolent dictators over what people see and hear; it's not the job they set out to have. But they've seen what happens now if they don't assume the responsibility their size has thrust upon them.
We're now at the beginnings of the experiment where they assume the role of benevolent dictators, and the results remain to be seen.