Reliability of protocol reviews for animal research (2001)

Plous, S., Herzog, H. A.

Abstract

A random sample of 50 Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees participated in a study of the protocol review process. Each committee submitted three animal behavior protocols it had recently reviewed, and these protocols were reviewed a second time by another participating committee. The result showed that approval decisions were statistically unrelated. On most cases, proposals that were disapproved by one committee were approved by the second committee. All told, 61% of [150] protocols were judged as either not very understandable or not understandable at all, as having poor research designs and procedures, or as justifying the type and number of animals in a way that was deemed not very convincing or not convincing at all.