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Comment by kasperset | Hacker News Reader

Just FYI, this study was done in mice.

As a rule of thumb, it’s best to assume that all studies like this are in mice or rats unless the headline specifically says “in human trials”.

Murine studies are a dime a dozen and therefore it’s the default assumption when reading research papers. When human trials commence the fact that it’s in humans is a big part of the research and therefore paper titles.

I would be in favor of adding a standardized [in mice] to the titles of all HN submissions about medical breakthroughs. Most of them end up being in mice and many do not reproduce in humans. It would help, at a glance, to know how significant a study's results are.

Or alternatively, some marker to indicate the presence of an “only in mice” comment

Maybe we find out why things work in mice and not us.

This works in mice with small tumors for two weeks until the experiment ends. It's quite different form working in humans with big tumors for 5 years.

Mice are good for early tries. The researchers had 9 bacterias and only 1 was successful. Experiments in mice are cheaper and have less ethical problems than experiments in humans.

(Hey! They even injected the cancer cells in mice and waited a week until it grow. Nobody will approve that in humans.)

Thanks, we've inmiced the title.

Of course it was done in mice, tests with animals are obviously mandatory before human trials.

They've given more lives to humanity than humanity itself (j/k)

Ah, I was wondering if it was one of those. And of course there's a relevant xkcd [0]

[0] https://xkcd.com/1217/

No, it is not relevant in the least. Murine studies are a standard practice on the path to human trials.

Your link is not even about animal studies. It is about a petri dish.

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