Evaluation of scientific rigor in animal research
Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) In the course of the 'reproducibility crisis' in biomedical research, scientific rigor in animal reserach, and thus the ethical justification of animal experiments, has also been questioned. Commissioned by the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO), researchers from the University of Bern have assessed scientific rigor in animal experimentation in Switzerland. Their findings indicate widespread deficiencies in experimental conduct. Faculty of the University of Bern, who conducted two studies on animal experimentation in Switzerland. In a first step, they screened all 1'277 applications for animal experiments approved in 2008, 2010 und 2012, as well as a random sample of 50 scientific publications resulting from studies described in these applications. These were scored for explicit evidence of the use of seven basic measures against risks of bias (including randomization, blinding, and sample size calculation). 'Use of these measures is a prerequisite for unbiased, scientifically valid results', says Prof. Hanno Würbel, director of the Division of Animal Welfare. Explicit evidence of the use of measures against risks of bias was scarce both in applications and publications. Thus, fewer than 20 percent of applications and publications mentioned whether a sample size calculation had been performed (8 percent in applications, 0 percent in publications), whether the animals had been assigned randomly to treatment groups (13 percent in applications, 17 percent in publications), and whether outcome assessment had been conducted blind to treatment (3 percent in applications, 11 percent in publications). Are measures against risks of bias not used?
