Would this pass IRB?

[kmclaughlin]

I have a student who wants to test how estrogen affects the aggressive behavior of Siamese Fighting Fish. It would involve adding a birth control pill to the fish tank and then testing aggression by putting a mirror on the outside of the tank and then counting the number of times the fish charges its image in one minute. Does this sound like it would be acceptable and not painful or harmful to the fish?

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

Welcome to Science Buddies!

It’s good that you are aware of the need to approve a project involving the use of vertebrate animals in a science project. Here is are the guidelines for this type of project:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... mals.shtml

Projects that are prohibited include “all induced toxicity studies such as those using alcohol, acid rain, insecticide, herbicide, heavy metals, etc.” The use of the birth control pill to the fish tank appears to fall into the “etc.” category.

Here is a research paper on this topic that found that high estrogen levels adversely affected the egg viability in fish, so estrogen has been shown to be harmful to fish.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16029894

I would recommend that you not approve this project idea. However, since you want to encourage your student, who is obviously interested in doing a science project, perhaps you could recommend using an invertebrate animal like Daphnia, or perhaps searching on the Science Buddies website for an alternative project.

Donna Hardy