Sexist lab mice engage in gender bias!

The smell of a man makes mice more stressed than the smell of a woman

It turns out the best-laid research plans involving mice and men have a bit of a wrinkle — the lab rodents appear to react differently to male scientists during experiments than they do to females.

And that could skew results of numerous medical studies in which the critters are used as stand-ins for humans, suggests Jeffrey Mogil, a professor of behavioural neuroscience at McGill University, whose lab set out to test the responses of mice to male versus female experimenters.