this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Studies in mine lead to studies in humans, and the process saves time and is safer and is generally somewhat applicable. Does it always work out? No. The problem is media reporting studies in mice as canonical truth for humans when studies need to happen in humans - but studies in mice are valuable and directly lead to improvements in human health.
I didn't say mice studies were not valuable I said they can generalize to humans. You cannot get better data by mixing mice studies with human. Particularly with diet where we have evolved to eat different diets.
So why do you think they do those studies? Is it just to sit around and jack off? Are they just that stupid that they waste time that has no benefit? Why do you think they spend the time doing it?
First of all because they are cheap and easy. Mice can live in a small cage, don't eat much, and don't live long. Mice also can be forced to eat whatever diet you want, (unlike humans - nearly all diet studied in humans should result in "in conclusion we were unable to get the subjects to eat their assigned diet") That means you can do a study in a lab quick and cheap.
While mice don't generalize, there is a lot we can learn from them. We just need to remember the limits of mice studies and not generalize to anything other than mice (and even mice is questionable since lab mice are often genetically different from wild mice, sometimes intentionally). So long as you remember the limits mice are valuable.
Or, they waste decades of time and billions of dollars studying an artifact of rodent biology not relevant to humans. Most rodent research does not work out in humans. They are not universal models of diseases.
If 100% of studies do not lead to direct improvements for humans, then, we must give up all the ones that do because you don't like that all of them do? That seems counterproductive to me. Because mice studies have absolutely contributed to benefits to humans. That's why they do them. If they didn't lead to success, people motivated by trying to improve things for humans AND people motivated purely by profit WOULD NOT DO THEM.
uhh ... cellular biology between humans and coconut is like 90% similar ... at a fundamental level