Labanimal

The January 2020 episode of 3 Minute 3Rs, brought to you by the NC3Rs (www.nc3rs.org.uk), the North American 3Rs Collaborative (www.na3rsc.org), and Lab Animal (www.nature.com/laban). Papers: 1. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201949709 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56860-7 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023677219879455 [NC3Rs] Academic scientists produce many of the clever ideas which end up as medicines. However, the results in the papers reporting the work are almost always positive, and null or negative results rarely get a look in – a phenomenon known as publication bias. This is problematic as the negative or null data could be useful to other researchers. It can also lead to a culture of striving for positive results, potentially increasing poor experimental design or the inappropriate use of statistics. Overall this contributes to the so-called ‘reproducibility crisis’ and means that animals are used in studies that are not correctly designed to demonstrate an effect. In response to this