Good research practice in non-clinical pharmacology and biomedicine
Date
2020Author
Bespalov, Anton
Michel, Martin C.
Steckler, Thomas
Advisor
Bespalov, Anton
Michel, Martin C.
Steckler, Thomas
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Abstract
Pharmacologists and other experimental life scientists study samples to infer
conclusions about how a molecule, cell, organ, and/or organism work in health
and disease and how this can be altered by drugs. The concept of inference implies
that whatever is reported based on the sample under investigation is representative
for the molecule, cell, organ, or organism under investigation in general. However,
this generalizability requires that two fundamental conditions are met: First, what is
being reported must be a true representation of what has been found. This sounds
trivial, but if data are selected, e.g., by unexplained removal of outliers or reporting is
biased by focusing on the findings in support of a hypothesis, reported data become a
biased rather than a true representation of what has been found. Second, what has
been found must be robust, i.e., other investigators doing a very similar experiment
should come up with similar findings. This requires a complete reporting of what
exactly has been done. It also requires that biases at the level of sampling, measuring,
and analyzing are reduced as much as feasible. These are scientific principles that
have been known for a long time. Nonetheless, scientific practice apparently often
ignores them—in part based on felt pressure to generate as many articles in highprofile journals as possible. While the behavior of each participant (investigators,
institutions, editors, publishers, and funders) follows an understandable logic, the
result is counterproductive for the greater aims of scientific investigation. Against
this background, this volume in the series Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology
discusses various aspects related to the generation and reporting of robust data. It is
published 100 years after the first volume of the series, and this anniversary is a
fitting occasion to reflect on current practice and to discuss how the robustness of
experimental pharmacology can be enhanced.
It has become clear in the past decade, that many if not most preclinical study
findings are not reproducible. Governmental and nongovernmental funding bodies
have realized that and demand that the scientific community improves its standards
of scientific rigor. Particularly, the use of experimental animals in biomedical
research creates the ethical imperative that they are utilized in robustly designed
studies only.
Palabras clave
Pharmacology; Biomedicine; Research practiceCollections
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