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Why do we use experimental models

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Why do we study disease using experimental models?

People are sometimes surprised that so much research into disease involves studying models rather than the disease itself. In fact it is pretty easy to find many examples of experiments that started in models that went on to produce astonishing advances in medical care. But saying this, it is important to remember that there is another part of this question that often gets ignored, which is why are models so effective in advancing our understanding of the biology of disease?

Answering this question illuminates something fundamental about the nature of science. Doing research is a very practical process. It is constrained by what it is possible to know. When we start an experiment we have to ask a very specific question. Indeed if the question is not specific enough, then no matter how well we do the experiment, we won’t be able to understand the answer it gives us. So in the experiment we have to arrange things in just such a way that the outcome is not ambiguous. This limits enormously what we can do. It is part of the reason why setting big goals for science, like curing asthma, does not help us plan how to achieve these ends.

Models have a very significant place in reducing the ambiguity of experiments, because they allow for the same thing to be tested repeatedly. They can be adopted around the world and examined in other countries by different scientists. When this happens and the outcome remains the same, this is a very strong test that a particular discovery is relevant and robust. In experiments in biology, which necessarily means working with a degree of uncertainty, models that allow us to repeat the same treatment several times can accelerate progress towards developing new treatments or understanding of disease.

So one answer to the question of why scientists use models is because they work so well. To make progress we have to find questions that we can answer. When we carry out an experiment, we are not trying to find out someone’s opinion. We want to ask a question that has never been asked before and to which there is an unambiguous answer. Doing this is a lot harder than it sounds, but using models helps to keep things simple enough that we can make progress, one step at a time.

Lindsay Nicholson.



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