The Pros And Cons Of Animal Studies

New studies are being published on the ethical failings of researchers to adequately represent data in a variety of contexts. This could have serious implications for the veracity of certain information germane to deliberations on whether or not studies should progress to the next stage, among other things. One new American study, for example, has found that placebo groups are used often in clinical trials despite a lack of appropriate guidelines for how they can be used, and the study shows how problematic that is. Meanwhile, a German and Canadian study is showing what is perhaps an even bigger deal, which is that inadequacies in the designs of animal studies as well as insufficient reporting of said studies are proving to be a circumvention

Kimmelman, Strech, and their colleagues were flabbergasted, and their own findings ultimately are understated by their assessment that these documents did not adequately measure the strength of the evidence that supported the transition to human testing on the basis of completed animal experiments. To say that there is evidence of publication bias for that matter, which they do also say, is just isn’t enough in and of itself.

“With a median group size of eight animals, these studies had limited ability to measure treatment effects precisely. Chance alone should have resulted in more studies being negative — the imbalance strongly suggests publication bias,” according to postdoctoral fellow Susanne Wieschowski from Strech’s team. Mind you, they assessed 109 investigator brochures that were all approved by those three German review boards most responsible for reviewing such things. This corroborates the findings of previous studies that also found that animal-based research commonly doesn’t involve the critical analyses that they

They published in Nutrients that, in lieu of the progress made by American institutions since World War II, medical ethics still falls short when it comes to guidelines (or the lack thereof) for how placebo groups are used for drugs that have already made it to human