Cathleen O’GradyAnimal research is facing a crisis: Up to 89% of all preclinical research—which includes animal research—can’t be replicated, according to a 2015 analysis, often because researchers fail to describe basic details of the experimental setup.
This calls into question the validity of the findings, says Nathalie Percie du Sert, who works on improving animal research at the U.K.
National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research. “If you can’t do anything with the results,” she says, “what’s the point of the study in the first place?”To address the problem of poor reporting, Percie du Sert and a team of researchers have developed a checklist of 10 critical details each animal study needs to.