{"id":4505,"date":"2019-04-19T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T13:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2019-04-18T10:50:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:50:33","slug":"building-a-better-research-mousetrap-justsaysinmice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/building-a-better-research-mousetrap-justsaysinmice\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Better Research Mousetrap: @justsaysinmice"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you keep up on brain news, you have frequently had this experience:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You read a newspaper headline or a blog link, and news of a potential discovery gives you an adrenaline rush:<\/p>\n

Eating garlic may prevent age-related memory loss!<\/p>\n

Radoiactive tracer shows effectiveness of cancer treatment!!<\/p>\n

Ketamine may relieve depression!!!<\/p>\n

Filled with enthusiasm, you read the accompanying article. Only to discover: the research was done\u00a0on mice<\/em>. The resulting adrenaline crash might cause you to desire chocolate-chip cookies (according to research done in mice).<\/p>\n

Today’s News<\/h2>\n

Of course, mouse research is super important to establish basic biological processes. But, it doesn’t give teachers useful guidance. Ever.<\/p>\n

(Now might be a good time to repeat one of my few absolute rules:<\/p>\n

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,<\/p>\n

Change your teaching practice<\/p>\n

Based on research<\/p>\n

Into non-human animals.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To highlight the foolishness of headline-hiding-the-mouse gambit, researcher James Heathers has created a vital new twitter account: @justsaysinmice.<\/p>\n

That’s it. When you follow his account, you’ll get occasional updates with links to articles drawing breathless conclusions about research. Heathers wants you to know that the research shows results\u00a0in mice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As of this writing, Heathers’s account has 29 tweets, and north of 45,000 followers.<\/p>\n

(By the way, we’ve written about Heathers’s skepticism<\/a> before. He is developing a specialty in debunking inaccurate science communication.)<\/p>\n

So, to tune up your skepticism skills, I encourage you to make @justsaysinmice a part of your twitter world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new twitter account can help you sort the good science reporting from the bad. And, it’s got cute pictures too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-4505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4505"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4510,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions\/4510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}