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美教授《自然》论文因违反动物福利引科学家争议

发布科室：动物实验室时间：2015年09月18日

据《自然》报道，麻省总医院-哈佛医学院Sam Lee教授一篇《自然》论文因实验小鼠肿瘤直径过大而发布修改通知。

这篇论文发表于2011年，由麻省总医院、哈佛医学院及Broad研究所共同组成的科研小组研究完成，论文报道小分子化合物荜茇酰胺可以特异性杀死小鼠中癌细胞。

《自然》发布修改通告称，实验中一些小鼠成瘤的直径超过动物福利准则规定的1.5厘米。该动物福利准则是由美国麻省总医院动物保护及利用协会（IACUC）制定的。《自然》一篇社论称，《自然》期刊要求作者控制肿瘤的直径，使其不违反动物使用制度委员会制定的准则。

成瘤直径大小在不同研究机构准则是不同的，英国一研究小组在2010年发布的准则是小鼠中不超过1.2厘米，而美国研究机构的准则一般是不超过2厘米。

目前论文的结论依然有效，但论文中违规的数据已撤下。澳大利亚一名学者David Vaux在PubPee发表评论称该论文应该被撤稿，他认为世界上没有动物伦理委员会会允许肿瘤直径达1.5厘米。挪威奥斯陆大学医学研究所Morten Oksvold也在PubPeer发表评论称，很多论文中小鼠成瘤直径超过了规定，但却通过了同行评议，其中很多论文还发表在影响因子较高的期刊上。

对此，《自然》回复称将重视动物福利及伦理研究，一旦发现发表在《自然》上的论文违反了编辑准则，将会对其进行详细的调查。

摘自：科学网

《自然》网站相关报道（英文）

Welfare breach prompts Nature to update policy on publishing animal experiments

US-based team withdraws data and admits mouse tumours were allowed to grow too large.

Daniel Cressey

16 September 2015

The journal Nature is publishing a correction to a study in which mouse tumours were allowed to grow too large — and says that in future it will require more information from scientists who report experiments on animals. But the scientist who first raised the problem says that the paper should be retracted.

In the paper¹, published in 2011, a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and the Broad Institute in Massachusetts reported that a small molecule called piperlongumine could selectively kill cancer cells in mice.

According to the Nature correction², the experiments allowed tumours in some of the mice to grow to larger than an allowed maximum diameter of 1.5 centimetres — a stipulation that formed part of animal-welfare guidelines set for the work by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of Massachusetts General Hospital.

That could have caused the mice to experience more suffering than allowed for, and represents a “breach of experimental protocol”, says a Nature Editorial on the issue³.

“As a result of this case, we are increasing the amount of information we request from authors. In experiments in which tumours are grown, we now require authors to include the maximal tumour size permitted by the institutional animal-use committee, and to state that this was not exceeded,” says the Editorial.

Correction argument

Some data in the paper that came from mice for which the rules were breached are being withdrawn, although the conclusions of the study remain valid, says the journal. (Nature's news team is editorially independent of its research editorial team.)

But David Vaux, who studies cell death at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and who raised concerns about the paper with Nature, says the paper should be retracted. He says that by publishing the study and not retracting it, the journal is "giving tacit approval" to breaches of animal-welfare rules.

Vaux says he was initially confused by some of the statistics in the paper. After he raised his concerns, a corrigendum was published in 2012 detailing errors in the reporting of tumour data and replacing a picture in the original paper with a new photograph of some of the mice used⁴. It was at this point, says Vaux, that he suspected the tumours were larger than should have been permitted.

“No animal ethics committee anywhere in the world would allow tumours the size of these ones,” Vaux says.

Standards on acceptable tumour sizes differ in institutions around the world. Guidelines from a UK group published in 2010 recommend mean diameters should not normally exceed 1.2 centimetres in mice⁵. US institutional guidelines often recommend 2 centimetres as a maximum size.

Vaux posted some of his concerns on the website PubPeer — as did Morten Oksvold, a cancer researcher at the Oslo University Hospital Institute for Cancer Research. Oksvold said in an e-mail to Nature that violation of welfare rules should lead to a retraction and an investigation by the institution concerned. The correction states that the IACUC has reviewed all the data now presented in the paper, and that "corrective measures have since been taken to avoid any irregularities happening again".

Oksvold says that he has seen “many cases where mice suffer with all-too-large tumour sizes in scientific publications, many of them in high-impact journals” and says he is surprised that such cases slip through the peer-reviewing system.

Asked to comment, Nature said: "We take all issues related to animal welfare and ethical animal research very seriously. If we become aware of any breach of our editorial policies in any publishedNature paper, we would look into it very carefully."

The research team was led by Anna Mandinova, Stuart Schreiber and Sam Lee, from whomNature's news team has requested comment. In the correction, the researchers write: "Although the scientific conclusions of the original paper stand, we would like to apologize for the numerous inaccuracies in reporting our data, and for the breach of animal welfare guidelines in some of the original data."

Nature

doi:10.1038/nature.2015.18384