ArticleTheory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften2021
A reaction norm perspective on reproducibility.
Article in Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Conventional laboratory housing increases morbidity and mortality in research rodents: results of a meta-analysis.BMC biology · 2022Pooled it
- Data Analysis Planning and Reporting for Confirmatory Multi-Lab Preclinical Trials: A Tutorial.Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift · 2026Review
- Additive effects of environmental and demographic variation shape the repeatability of evolution across replicated experiments.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Testing the reproducibility of ecological studies on insect behavior in a multi-laboratory setting identifies opportunities for improving experimental rigor.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Using mice from different breeding sites fails to improve replicability of results from single-laboratory studies.Lab animal · 2024Article
- Narrowing the translational research gap by aligning replication concepts in basic and clinical neuroscience.Journal of neuroscience methods · 2023Article
- The rearing environment persistently modulates mouse phenotypes from the molecular to the behavioural level.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Combining Animal Welfare With Experimental Rigor to Improve Reproducibility in Behavioral Neuroscience.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Review
- Safety of a NovelFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2021Article
- Incorporating inter-individual variability in experimental design improves the quality of results of animal experiments.PloS one · 2021Article
- Replications in Comparative Cognition: What Should We Expect and How Can We Improve?Animal behavior and cognition · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Reproducibility in biomedical research, and more specifically in preclinical animal research, has been seriously questioned. Several cases of spectacular failures to replicate findings published in the primary scientific literature have led to a perceived reproducibility crisis. Diverse threats to reproducibility have been proposed, including lack of scientific rigour, low statistical power, publication bias, analytical flexibility and fraud. An important aspect that is generally overlooked is the lack of external validity caused by rigorous standardization of both the animals and the environment. Here, we argue that a reaction norm approach to phenotypic variation, acknowledging gene-by-environment interactions, can help us seeing reproducibility of animal experiments in a new light. We illustrate how dominating environmental effects can affect inference and effect size estimates of studies and how elimination of dominant factors through standardization affects the nature of the expected phenotype variation through the reaction norms of small effect. Finally, we discuss the consequences of reaction norms of small effect for statistical analysis, specifically for random effect latent variable models and the random lab model.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.