Staff devising scientific tests must live for one week in the conditions that their animals are living through.

So if the test has an operation which is claimed to not hurt, they get the operation too. And a month in advance so that they can make adaptations and retry, if so decided.

If the animals are given prises for pressing the right button, and fed by people saying: Very nice! Jimmy. Good Jimmy. They get their food that way too (with their name called in the same kind of condescending tone).

This is not punishment but rather a precondition for the tests' certification.
-- pashute, Dec 07 2020

Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys https://www.youtube...watch?v=cQ7J7UjsRqg
[Voice, Dec 14 2020]

So basically you are proposing an improvement in pay and conditions for many PhDs and Postdocs.
-- pocmloc, Dec 08 2020


Humans don't enjoy the same rewards that are enjoyed by lesser minds. So the two sets of living conditions are not equivalent. Or will you also be stuffing the scientists into a cage the same size at that the mouse lives in?
-- Voice, Dec 08 2020


So if you wanted to do a typical experiment where you inoculate some mice with a pathogen then sacrifice them and examine the organs, you'd have to do that with some scientists first?
Presumably there's a control group which can live to do the experiment?

I'm not saying there would be zero takers - many scientists are quite altruistic - but it does seem to me that the amount of medical research would plummet quite precipitously.

Although... Does this replace the ethics review? Because if it does, from what I hear you might've just made the whole procedure a lot easier.
-- Loris, Dec 08 2020


Nietzche says something like: science is the most recent and noblest form of the ascetic ideal; a means of self-anesthetization for sufferers who refuse to admit that they are such.
-- sninctown, Dec 08 2020


On one hand intelligence correlates with attractiveness. On the other hand obsession with science stereotypically correlates with social ineptness, if not ugliness. Hard to say whether science self-selects away from the gene pool.
-- Voice, Dec 08 2020


Will there be needlessly painful electric shocks ?
-- 8th of 7, Dec 08 2020


No, just painful electric shocks whether they're needed or not.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 08 2020


I meant only experiments claimed to not hurt the animal. Those that are necessarily approved like procedures that include removing organs from mice and "sacrificing" them on the alter ego, are not being discussed here.
-- pashute, Dec 08 2020


But giving electric shocks to the researchers doesn't hurt the animals, so that's OK is it ?
-- 8th of 7, Dec 08 2020


I sat down just now after being called away for a few hours and this window was open, I obviously had something I wished to say but can't remember right now what on earth that might have been so I'm place-marking this spot for a later date when whatever that might have been pops back into my head.

Okay. As you were.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 09 2020


I disagree [2fries]. While your suggestion is practically very sound and would be easy to implement, there are even more ethical issues with it than previously.

[just pre-emptively replying to whatever you were originally going to write]
-- pocmloc, Dec 09 2020


//ethical issues// True, but it would allow the viewers to pass food through the bars to the scientists _as well_ as poke them with sticks.
-- spidermother, Dec 09 2020


//intelligence correlates with attractiveness//

Psst: he said "ascetic", not "aesthetic".
-- pertinax, Dec 09 2020


Are you sure it wasn't 'acidic?'
-- RayfordSteele, Dec 09 2020


Quite sure, it was definitely Nietzsche who wrote that.
-- 8th of 7, Dec 09 2020


//So basically you are proposing an improvement in pay and conditions for many PhDs and Postdocs//

I had a short laugh about this until I started thinking about it and got a little sad. The mice live in social family groups, have rotating shifts of technicians dedicated to their welfare in a tightly-controlled warm environment with 24hr access to food, water, toys and a bed. They have a dedicated vet who checks in on them every few days.

In contrast, I'll be spending the day at a makeshift desk 36" wide in a lab that's supposed to be 22C, it's actually 17.5C, but no one will get in any trouble for that. I haven't seen my friends or family in longer than the average mouse lives. I'm quite hungry and I have no idea who my doctor is.

//stuffing the scientists into a cage the same size at that the mouse lives in?//

I spend my experimenting days in a microscope room that is significantly smaller, proportionally, than that.
-- bs0u0155, Dec 10 2020



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