Xu Yongping, a professor at the School of Bioengineering, Dalian University of Technology, recently felt disgusted.
Seven years ago, the team published a research paper online on PLOS 1. Recently, this paper was withdrawn by the editor of the magazine on the grounds that the research violated the animal welfare policy (unreasonable use of anesthetics and unreasonable euthanasia methods).
At present, all the living authors of this paper strongly disagree with withdrawing the manuscript.
"The reason for refusing to withdraw the manuscript is very simple. The practice of PLOS One magazine is totally unacceptable. Although the editorial department of PLOS No.1 consciously felt wrong-admitting mistakes and apologizing to the author, it still failed to make an objective evaluation based on the 25 pieces of evidence we provided, but subjectively and arbitrarily thought that we did not abide by the ethics of experimental animals and treated our serious scientific research simply and rudely, which was totally unacceptable to us. " Xu Yongping said in an exclusive response to China Science Journal.
Periodicals are at odds with authors.
Those scientific research projects involving experimental animals, in addition to observing the conventional academic norms, have a red line that cannot be touched, that is, experimental animal ethics.
It is recognized that this kind of ethics follows the "3R" principle, that is, substitution, reduction and optimization.
Among them, "substitution" means "using other methods without using animals as much as possible, or giving priority to using lower animals instead of higher animals for experiments"; "Reducing" means "reducing the use of experimental animals as much as possible without affecting the purpose of scientific research"; "Optimization" means "to avoid or alleviate the pain caused to experimental animals by improving experimental conditions and optimizing experimental technical routes".
"Optimization" is directly related to the protection of animal welfare and should follow the "five principles": experimental animals enjoy freedom from hunger and thirst, from comfortable life, from (extra) pain and disease, from fear and sadness, and from free expression of nature.
It is the "optimization" questioned by Xu Yongping's team in the aforementioned research.
A member of PLOS ONE animal research advisory group believes that experimental mink is suspected of being deprived of animal welfare protection because of unreasonable use of anesthetics or unreasonable euthanasia methods.
The editorial department put forward that "chloral hydrate is considered as an unreliable anesthetic, and it is still administered by intraperitoneal injection while knowing that it is described as peritoneal irritation"; In addition, they also believe that "the use of carbon dioxide in research is not considered an acceptable euthanasia method, and the humane end point described in the article may not be enough to prevent avoidable pain."
In order to solve these problems, China Journal of Science sought advice from Sun, the scientific consultant of the World Society for the Protection of Animals.
The latter said that the author's team may have animal welfare problems in the use of anesthetics and the humane end-point disposal of experimental animals. He said that from the available information, the experiment failed to follow the principle of "optimization" and did not choose the most suitable anesthetic for experimental animals, which not only affected the welfare of experimental animals, but also affected the accuracy of research results.
However, Xu Yongping's team has different opinions.
Xu Yongping told China Science: The questions about the welfare of experimental animals mentioned in the reasons for the withdrawal of PLOS I had been answered in detail as early as seven years ago, and then the paper was accepted and published. The acceptance and publication of the paper itself fully shows that the animal experiment in the paper has reached the ethical standard of PLOS No.1. If PLOS No.1 Middle School once thought that the animal experimental research in the paper did not meet their so-called ethical standards, they could reject the manuscript at that time, "We can also vote for other magazines".
Therefore, the group considers the above allegations totally unacceptable, and is seeking legal channels to appeal to the editorial department of PLOS I, "in order to safeguard the dignity and reputation of scientists in China".
A famous case: Nature was withdrawn as a citation paper.
In fact, Xu Yongping's team is not alone.
A famous case happened in Nature magazine: an express paper published on 20 1 1 by a scholar from Massachusetts General Hospital affiliated to Harvard Medical School was also accused of violating the principle of "optimization" and failed to protect experimental mice from extra pain, and was finally withdrawn.
20 12 The original author published an errata in the journal Nature, and uploaded pictures of mouse tumors while updating some charts.
Unexpectedly, this photo caused more controversy: I saw that the tumor in the mouse was huge, with a diameter far exceeding 1.5cm, which seriously violated the regulations of Massachusetts General Hospital on animal experiment ethics.
From the author's point of view, the greater the difference in tumor growth rate and tumor size between the experimental group and the control group, the better the statistical results; But for experimental animals, the longer and bigger the tumor, the more serious the mental and physical pain. Obviously, they have not received the animal welfare and ethical care they deserve.
However, different research institutions have different criteria for judging the tumor diameter of experimental mice. The standard issued by a British research group on 20 10 is no more than 1.2cm, while the standard of some American research institutions is no more than 2cm. At present, the largest diameter of mouse tumor recognized in the industry is 1.5cm.
It is worth mentioning that the retracted papers were once recognized as highly cited papers by the comprehensive literature database Web of Science, and the citation rate was as high as 1%. Nearly half of the hundreds of citations were cited by the author's team after 20 15 years of errata.
Animal welfare, easy to "step on the pit"
Because of the controversy caused by the ethics and welfare of experimental animals, there are still many "unsolved cases" that are difficult to determine.
Faced with the heavy pressure, the author of the paper submitted an application for withdrawing the manuscript to the preprint platform bioRxiv. But not long after, the author sent a letter saying that he had written to the latter to stop withdrawing the manuscript, and said that "nothing was wrong, just an animal experiment".
Many papers are controversial because of the ethics or welfare protection of experimental animals, and they are also a real reminder to everyone. If you don't pay attention to this work at ordinary times, it is easy to "step on the pit" and even face the risk of the paper being withdrawn.
Generally speaking, the standard practice for articles involving animal experiments is to indicate three points: strictly abide by the "3R principle" during the experiment and write it down in the article, and at the same time make it clear that the experiment has passed the ethical review of experimental animals and mark the corresponding approval number.
However, the reality is that this work is often neglected in China.
Su Meiyang I. Deng Wei reported in "Several Suggestions on Ethical Review of Laboratory Animal Welfare" published in China Journal of Comparative Medicine in 2020 that from 20 15 to 20 17, there were 53 1 articles about laboratory animals in China's biomedical journals, with only 650.
Sun told the China Journal of Science that at present, most domestic scientific research institutions, universities and other units have set up animal ethics committees, but the welfare protection measures for experimental animals have not been fully implemented, and some researchers' awareness of animal welfare needs to be further improved. In addition, although some institutions have set up animal ethics committees, they often become a mere formality and fail to play an effective role in auditing and supervising the protection of animal welfare.
Gao Hong, a researcher at the Institute of Medical Experimental Animals of China Academy of Medical Sciences, believes that many scientific achievements in China have been questioned because of the welfare ethics of experimental animals, and individual incidents have affected the image of scientists in the public mind and the public's recognition of scientific research. Papers published by Chinese scientists are also rejected from time to time, among which the welfare ethics of experimental animals have seriously affected the image of China as a big country in science and technology and the improvement of its scientific and technological innovation ability. Therefore, it is an urgent problem to attach importance to animal welfare ethics.
References:
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2. Li Dan, Guo Yuying, Deng Hao, Gaoshan and Xu Shixin. Research progress in welfare ethics of anesthesia in experimental animals [J]. China Journal of Comparative Medicine, 2017,27 (9): 87-91.
3. Cases of academic irregularities: animal experiments lead to ethical disputes on animal welfare +09-06- 13
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