On 11/7/2011 5:55 PM, William Scott wrote:
It is interesting that Animal IRB's often set a standard which makes it difficult to simply perform replication studies with animals. This is sometimes true for human IRB's as well. Replication attempts must be shown to be strongly justified in order to gain approval, the argument being that "we already know that" and shouldn't subject animals to any hardship that "doesn't further our knowledge". Bill Scott
Bill raises an important point about animal research. I am a member of the ASU Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The ASU application form for animal use requires the PI to report the results of database searches to make sure that the work doesn't unnecessarily duplicate previous work. Here are the instructions from the ASU form:
"Provide below a brief narrative description of the methods and sources that were used to determine that the Proposed activities do not unnecessarily duplicate previous experiments. (Sources might include Biological Abstracts, Index Medicus (PubMed or Ovid databases), Agricola, ISI Web of Science, and Chemical Abstracts)."
"Unnecessarily" does give a researcher a lot of wiggle room but the overall tone of the form discourages replications.
Ken ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kenneth M. Steele, Ph. D. [email protected] Professor and Assistant Chairperson Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=13991 or send a blank email to leave-13991-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
