The Wise And Powerful
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 | | Subject: Wasteful Government Spending Wed Jun 16, 2021 6:30 pm | |
| - Senator Rand Paul wrote:
#wastereportwednesday
Researchers performed a study using money from grants worth $4,575,43187 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the VA to get rats addicted to alcohol and then to spray them with bobcat urine. Now, the researchers will tell you they were studying the connection between veterans suffering from alcoholism and PTSD, and how sex impacted these ailments. But manifestly, they were studying three things: (1) “how male and female rats respond to bobcat urine” (a predator’s odor), (2) whether stress responsiveness to a predator’s odor changes following voluntary alcohol consumption, and (3) whether sex differences have an effect on the reaction.
Scientist’s spent five weeks giving rats “intermittent” access to alcohol to get them hooked. Then, they put the rats in a cage, and literally sprayed them with bobcat urine, a predator’s odor, to simulate trauma. Then, they tested whether males and females responded differently. In theory, the study was supposed to simulate the effects of alcoholism on how individuals react to trauma. And ultimately, researchers found substantial differences between male and female rats’ responses to bobcat urine, and that both male and female rats that had been drinking showed increased stress compared to their sober brethren.
But for those of you following along, you might have noticed one fundamental design flaw: the order of traumas. The research was supposed to simulate a veteran with PTSD returning from a tour of duty, becoming an alcoholic, and then how their alcoholism impacts their PTSD. But in this case, they flipped the order. The appropriate analogy is not the all-too-familiar story I just outlined. Rather, researchers’ study design could most appropriately be analogized to studying how pre-existing alcoholics deployed onto battlefields would respond to trauma they encounter overseas. I’m all for working towards solutions for alcoholism, and PTSD, particularly for our veterans. But we need to do work that actually solves the problem and replicates the issue. Otherwise, there won’t ever be any progress toward solving the problem that must be solved |
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