At a recent parliamentary debate, Jarrod Bailey, of the animal rights organisation ‘Europeans for Medical Progress’ did his best to convince the audience that animal research is bad science - as he would.

Bailey claimed that his opinions are based on hard scientific evidence, and he cited a couple of articles from the journal Biogenic Amines to back himself up. What he didn’t mention was that he was co-author of both studies. In other words, he agrees with himself. No surprises there! Strangely, one of his co-authors promotes vegan pet food, rather than having any expertise in bio-medical research.

What Bailey kept even quieter about was the way these two articles had got into a journal in the first place. It turns out that a well known antivivisectionist called Claude Reiss had managed to get on the editorial board of Biogenic Amines. Reiss has connections to the animal rights organisation Animal Aid and is a science consultant to - you guessed - Europeans for Medical Progress.

The journal has been unable to confirm that these papers were peer-reviewed (a process where scientists with expertise in the field examine the paper). The journal editor, Parvez, later wrote that the journal “in the past, have insertion of an antivivisectionist, Claude Reiss, in the editorial board who did some of the editing,”. Parvez said “after his two-years stay in the editorial board, he did lots of harm to the journal and we all forced him to resign”. So at least that rather feeble attempt to gain credibility by the antivivisectionists has been put to rest.