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Getting personal with the “reproducibility crisis”: interviews in the animal research community

Lab Animal volume 47, pages 175–177 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor: Reproducibility problems are prevalent in research involving animal models, and publications on methodological pitfalls of animal experimentation are copious. Kilkenny et al.1 found reporting and robustness problems in the statistical analysis of nearly 60% of published animal research surveyed, with over 60% using inefficient experimental designs. Button et al.2 estimated that roughly 50% of published neuroscience studies have power less than 20%. The study of Freedman et al.3 indicates that experimental design and statistical analysis are factors in over 50% of irreproducible preclinical research. In addition to statistical concerns, inadequate animal study design tops the list of reproducibility offenders. Careful attention to the experimental design process can improve the quality of the experiment and hence the harm-benefit balance for laboratory animals. Toward that end, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supports a number of projects in experimental design for the animal studies that provide the foundation for therapeutic discovery and development. Our company, Tempest Technologies, was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop online experimental design tools for animal researchers. As part of the tool development process, we interviewed biomedical researchers, policy-makers, funders, and regulators to learn about the challenges of animal studies. At a high level, our findings corroborate those reported in Baker4, but our personal conversations offer insights into the design and analysis of animal experiments and the concerns of stakeholders.

During the summer months of 2016, Tempest personnel contacted over 1000 scientists, program officials, regulators, and administrators in academia, government, industry, and private foundations; 131 accepted our invitation for an interview.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Irina Sazonova and Mr. Victor Prikhodko of NIDA for their support of this project. We would also like to thank the I-CorpsTM at NIH instructors, especially Dr. Aileen Huang-Saad and Mr. Todd Morrill, for their criticism, guidance, and encouragement as we conducted our interviews and processed our findings. Finally, we are very thankful to all the interviewees who generously shared their time and their insights and helped us understand their challenges in experimental design and reproducibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tempest Technologies, Los Angeles, California, United States

    Ben G. Fitzpatrick & Yun Wang

  2. Department of Mathematics, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California, United States

    Ben G. Fitzpatrick

  3. Office of Translational Initiatives and Program Innovations, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States

    Elena Koustova

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  1. Ben G. Fitzpatrick
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Correspondence to Ben G. Fitzpatrick.

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Fitzpatrick, B.G., Koustova, E. & Wang, Y. Getting personal with the “reproducibility crisis”: interviews in the animal research community. Lab Anim 47, 175–177 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41684-018-0088-6

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