Research: Animal Studies on MS

Baker D, Lidster K, Sottomayor A, Amor S. Reproducibility: Research-reporting standards fall short. Nature 492, 41(06 December 2012) doi:10.1038/492041a


More than 150 journals and many research-funding charities have endorsed the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting research that uses animal models but we find that they are being largely ignored. This could undermine data reproducibility and model credibility, and might obstruct translation.


Analysis of the literature over the recent months show that analysis of data in animal models of MS is pretty poor and what's more it is shockingly bad in the so-called quality journals.  They are spending too much time on the headline stuff, whilst forgetting about the nuts and bolts. Perhaps it is not surprising why so much that is published in these quality journals turns out to be unrepoducible guff. 

This shows that there is some pretty bad refereeing going on. The simple bad practises should be spotted. 

There have been guidelines suggested, which can aid in limiting this poor level of reporting, but the journals are ignoring these. So they need to up their game! Otherwise we willl continue to be deluged with stuff that frankly should be better.

CoI: This is the work of Team G 

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