Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders

Nelson, Nicole C.

ISBN 10: 022654608X / ISBN 13: 9780226546087

Edité par University of Chicago Press, 2018

A propos de cet article

Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD PAPERBACK Standard-sized.

N° de réf. du vendeur M022654608XZ3

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders
• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date de parution: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 022654608X
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780226546087
• Reliure: Paperback
• État de l'article: Good

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today—but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior, Nicole C. Nelson takes us inside an animal behavior genetics laboratory to examine how scientists create and manage the foundational knowledge of their field.

Behavior genetics is a particularly challenging field for making a clear-cut case that mouse experiments work, because researchers believe that both the phenomena they are studying and the animal models they are using are complex. These assumptions of complexity change the nature of what laboratory work produces. Whereas historical and ethnographic studies traditionally portray the laboratory as a place where scientists control, simplify, and stabilize nature in the service of producing durable facts, the laboratory that emerges from Nelson’s extensive interviews and fieldwork is a place where stable findings are always just out of reach. The ongoing work of managing precarious experimental systems means that researchers learn as much—if not more—about the impact of the environment on behavior as they do about genetics. Model Behavior offers a compelling portrait of life in a twenty-first-century laboratory, where partial, provisional answers to complex scientific questions are increasingly the norm.

À propos de l?auteur

Nicole C. Nelson is assistant professor in the Department of History and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.