Reducing life span by knocking out the gene associated with the body's internal clock

Lately I have been a bit cynical about the penultimaticity of the double-dissociation finding in experimental psychology. Although, maybe I am just sick of its overabundance in neuropsychology (and pretty much sick of their findings and conclusions in general these days). That said I wish the investigators in this article in ScienceNOW (abstract is here) would have flipped to the other side of coin.

What they have found is that mice with the BMAL1 gene knocked out, lived on average 18 weeks shorter and displayed behavior and neurobiological pathologies usually found in much older mice. I think that it would not be incorrect for me to conclude that these mice lived accelerated lives, out of sync with normal circadian rhythms. The other side of the coin would be to show that by manipulating the gene in some way they could increase the life span or slow down the circadian rhythms of the mice. In the big picture that would be what people care about, and not how to shorter life spans. That said, these results show an interesting link between circadian rhythms and life span.