My problem with this article and sentiment is that there is no good alternative suggested. I don't know enough about mouse research standards, but I would think that all these details should be targets of further research to understand the system better and make better protocols to control it, instead of the marathon of hand-wringing that I see in this article - most of it irrelevant to the model itself. Out of all the things discussed in the article, I literally cannot identify any actionable items. It's just a big discussion of various aspects of modern biology, framed in a contrarian manner.
I felt otherwise. I believe the author not only pointed out other alternatives but talked with those people trying to do things differently. Namely the course of action is simply to try different and more varied things.
The whole problem that is being decried is that of following a rigid, fixed formula that tries to generalize for all cases. That of using the mouse model for everything, even those things for which it is not the best fit.
In software terms this is akin to Netflix's implementation of Chaos Monkey. Mainly that one shouldn't only check for certain failure conditions that have been previously specified, but to also create a framework where you try to look for faults in areas that are outside of the expected.
I don't think this is like work where you should always go to the boss with a solution to the problem you're presenting to him.
Science is half about finding the problems in the present model and then everyone runs around and tries to find a solution to save it. They may even end up throwing the idea out and adopting a new one.
My problem with this article and sentiment is that there is no good alternative suggested. I don't know enough about mouse research standards, but I would think that all these details should be targets of further research to understand the system better and make better protocols to control it, instead of the marathon of hand-wringing that I see in this article - most of it irrelevant to the model itself. Out of all the things discussed in the article, I literally cannot identify any actionable items. It's just a big discussion of various aspects of modern biology, framed in a contrarian manner.