ArticleRoyal Society open science2024
Evidence of HARKing in mouse behavioural tests of anxiety.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Breathing Rate as a Marker for Noise-Induced Stress in Guinea Pigs.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Evidence of HARKing in mouse behavioural tests of anxiety.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Animal welfare research is fascinating, ethical, and useful-but how can it be more rigorous?BMC biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Over the last decades, behavioural tests in animals, especially rodents, have been a standard screening method to determine the mechanisms of action and efficacy of psychopharmacological compounds. Yet, recently the reproducibility of some of these tests has been questioned. Based on a systematic review of the sensitivity of mouse behavioural tests to anxiolytic drugs, we analysed behavioural outcomes extracted from 206 studies testing the effect of diazepam in either the open-field test or the hole-board test. Surprisingly, we found that both the rationale given for using the test, whether to detect anxiolytic or sedative effects, and the predicted effect of diazepam, anxiolytic or sedative, strongly depended on the reported test results. The most likely explanation for such strong dependency is post hoc reasoning, also called hypothesizing after the results are known (HARKing). HARKing can invalidate study outcomes and hampers evidence synthesis by inflating effect sizes. It may also lead researchers into blind alleys, and waste animals, time and resources for inconclusive research.
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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.