SORBETTO/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1724)

Amidst what has been termed ‘reproducibility crisis’ (see also a number of previous posts) in June 2014 the National Institutes of Health and Nature Publishing Group had convened a workshop on the rigour and reproducibility of preclinical biomedicine. As a result, last week the NIH published ‘Principles and Guidelines for Reporting Preclinical Research‘, and Nature as well as Science ran editorials on it. More than 30 journals, including the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, are endorsing the guidelines. The guidelines cover rigour in statistical analysis, transparent reporting and standards (including randomization and blinding as well as sample size justification), and data mining and sharing. This is an important step forward, but implementation has to be enforced and monitored: The ARRIVE guidelines (many items of which reappear in the NIH guidelines) have not been adapted widely yet (see previous post). In this context I highly recommend the article by Henderson et al in Plos Medicine in which they systematically review existing guidelines for in vivo animal experiments. From this the STREAM collaboration distilled a checklist on internal, external, and construct validity which I found more comprehensive and relevant than the one published now by the NIH. In the end, however, it is not so relevant to which guideline (ARRIVE, NIH, STREAM, etc.) researchers, reviewers, editors, or funders comply, but rather whether they use one at all!

Note added 12/15/2014: Check out the PubPeer postpublication discussion on the NIH/Nature/Science initiative (click here)!