RDS has long accepted the need for continuous improvement in the design and analysis of all types of research. This goes especially for animal research, which is our area of concern and has ethical indications. The concept is partly enshrined in one of the 3Rs, namely ‘reduction’, which implies getting the most useful information out of research projects whilst using the least number of animals.

The group SABRE has launched a website to ‘facilitate discussion about the methods used to design and evaluate animal studies in medical research’. We support such attempts at dialogue, and hope it takes off. So far there are few posts.

SABRE includes links to a number of references, which it points out are not endorsed by the group. This raises an interesting question. We clicked on four references at random, and three of them were by Andrew Knight—a well-known antivivisectionist. All were claiming to be systematic reviews which demonstrate that animal models don’t work. This individual is hardly likely to come to any other conclusion.

The whole point of systematic reviews is to use a defined methodology to improve the analysis of existing research, so as to ensure a better foundation for future research. At some stage we could need a methodology to sort the poorly-conducted reviews from the rigorous ones!