There’s another kind of gender bias in scientific research that we haven’t been talking about.
Lab mice respond differently to men and women based on their respective scents, according to new research out of McGill University in Montreal. And researchers suggest it could have an effect on the outcome and replicability of studies that examine mice behavior or pain levels in response to a drug being developed, for example.
A team led by Jeffrey Mogil at McGill’s Department of Psychology measured how mice responded to pain in the presence of male and female researchers and male- and female-worn T-shirts. Using the mouse grimace scale, they found that mice expressed a lower pain response when men were present.
In the same way that athletes may not experience pain immediately when they hurt themselves in the middle of a game, the researchers say increased stress levels caused the lower pain levels in mice. But mice also had increased body temperatures and levels of the stress hormone corticosterone, the researchers said in their study, which was just published in Nature Methods.
Mogil told The Verge his team suspects mice react this way because they’re territorial and have evolutionarily adapted to react to lone men this way, at least initially until they can determine that the man means no harm. Interestingly, the researchers found the stress-inducing effects of male researchers were canceled out after the researchers were in the room for 45 minutes, or by the joint presence of a female’s scent.
The implication, Mogil said, is that the sex of researchers should be acknowledged in the methodology sections of studies, as a factor in the lab environment.
