University of Maryland psychiatrist Polymnia Georgiou and colleagues accidentally came across an unexpected example of researchers unwittingly skewing a study’s results when their laboratory mice’s reactions to ketamine differed depending on the sex of the humans who administered the drug.
To check it wasn’t just a weird fluke, they did a blinded, randomized trial with an even mix of male and female experimenters. The mice indeed had a greater antidepressant response to ketamine when handled by male humans.
Obviously, the presence of male humans does not somehow change the properties of ketamine, so the researchers probed deeper to confirm the exact mechanism.
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