Science Forums 2

[HydrogenBond]

Here is a new spin on animal testing. Animals testing in psychology are often extrapolated to human behavior. The question is, to what extent is this valid?. It can teach us things, but there might be limit to its usefulness. We don't use rats or mice to help us with lion behavior. The analogy is testing tractors to predict the performance of sports cars.

After thinking about this, what came to mind was an affect analogous to fables. I mean this in the positive sense. Fables often use animals to get a point across. If you used humans exclusively, in a fable, you might insult someone. With an animal you can sort of get the point across, while also avoiding a direct assault on human subjectivity.

Often in culture, there are conventions of behavior. You can't directly present certain things since it might hit a taboo. If you use an animal you can get the point across but in a way that can slide under the social censor.

Animal behavior analogies for humans also suggests since we are using tractors to define performance in sports cars, it gives you more flexibility in terms of being more supportive of the consensus opinions. The big knobby tires help the tractor, so if big knobby tires are in vogue, we can use that tractor data to support those who lobby for bigger knobby tires for sport cars.

One difference between science and religion, when it comes to human behavior, is religion is less likely to use the animal angle. In that respect, it is not as subtle in terms of sliding under the social consensus radar. One can see the divide. But it is also less likely to use tractors to support the modern social definition of sports cars. I am not taking either side, since both data sets can be useful. But since religion sticks more exclusively to human behavior data and science uses animal data too, could the different data sets account for differences in terms of approach and correlations?