Thinking like a mouse

Mice And Humans Should Have More In Common In Clinical Trials

An interesting suggestion here about how medical researchers' attitude toward mice is not giving the best results:

... new research shows that the customary practice of standardizing mice by trying to limit environmental variation in laboratories actually increases the chance of getting an incorrect result....

....scientists often use mice that are basically genetically identical and try to limit internal and external environmental factors such as stress, diet and age to eliminate variables affecting the outcome.

Garner said there is no practical way to ensure that all environmental conditions are the same with mice, however, because they respond to cues humans cannot detect. For example, a researcher's odor in one lab might cause more stress for a mouse than another researcher's odor in a second lab with different mice, giving different results. But scientists, unaware of the odor difference, may believe a treatment worked when the mice were actually responding to an environmental cue, giving a false positive.

More details are in the article about why they think mixing up different mice would work better.