By Tara Haelle
Thinking about covering an animal study? Here are five tips or considerations to keep in mind as you make your decision and then proceed with interviews and writing. These tips come from a crowdsourced social media post and include attributions.
1. Consider covering animal studies for the purpose of pre-emptive correction.
Although animal studies shouldn’t be used to translate knowledge, interventions or effects directly to humans, all too often it is, whether in mainstream media or in some popular but non-science-based blogs. That might be a good time to cover the study simply for the purpose of correcting the hype.
“I accepted a request from an editor to write on one of the recent Zika vaccine trials in animals because it was clearly going to get a lot of ink, and I might as well try to be one of the ones out there to keep in context,” said researcher and science writer Tara C. Smith, Ph.D.
Many reporters may remember the infamously oversold and problematic “Seralini” study in which French researcher Gilles-Eric Séralini, who had undisclosed conflicts of interest, published a small study allegedly showing that rats fed Monsanto’s GMO corn developed massive tumors. The study was riddled with methodological problems and much of the breathless press inappropriately claimed causality. Science writer and biologist Emily Willingham, Ph.D., called the Seralini study “possibly one of the most ill-received high-profile scientific publications in recent memory,” yet it had serious ramifications in some realms, and it remains one of the top Google search results when GMO food is searched. The study was eventually retracted (and then republished to more criticism), but it remains an important case study in the value of countering misinterpreted or simply bad studies.)
2. Is the study an important step on the way toward developing a vaccine or drug?
These are tricky because most pharmaceutical agents tested in animals will never make it to human studies, even if the results are positive in the animals. But when a disease is especially in the spotlight, such as coverage of Zika and Ebola in recent years, people are yearning to know how the vaccine development is coming along. Journalist and author Bonnie Rochman, for example, would consider covering a story if it’s related to a current epidemic, such as Zika a few years ago, and therefore is especially newsworthy — but again with appropriate caveats.
Reporting on these studies with context and plenty of caveats can help readers understand the process of science as well as fulfill their curiosity about the vaccine’s development. At the same time, be careful — stories about the Holy Grail of a universal flu vaccine have been published for about two decades, and we’re not that much closer to one.
Similarly, reporting on an animal study related to a new cancer drug—again with plenty of context and caveats— might at least help people closely following treatments for that cancer know the direction scientists are thinking in drug development, said journalist and former scientist Jaclyn Jansen. “It is at least a good way for people to know what drugs are making their way through the pipeline,” she said, as long as it’s VERY clear that it’s exploratory and not something that can be applied to humans.
3. Does the study importantly advance understanding of medical science?
Sometimes a study reveals a deeper understanding of a biological mechanism or disease model that’s important and can advance human research even if the findings aren’t directly relevant to humans, Smith said. The study may not immediately have clinical relevance, but it may lead research into drugs or other treatments in a new direction that consumers might be interested in. Reporter Jill Adams, for example, said she once did a story that illuminated the complexity of weight loss and calorie consumption. Though it couldn’t be applied directly to humans, it did reveal biological mechanisms that help researchers — and everyday people — understand that those complexities exist, even if they’re not exactly the same in people.
Similarly, Esther Landhuis (@elandhuis) wrote about new therapeutic leads for treating a childhood brain cancer that only came about from cell and mouse studies after 40 years of stalemate. “Research in cell cultures and animal models is often essential for understanding disease mechanisms in order to select which agents to test in multi-million dollar clinical trials,” Landhuis said.
3. Can you pair the study with human studies that show relevance?
Beth Skwarecki said she considers writing about animal studies if the results are not simply surprising but actually important and have a “robust link to humans.” She mentioned covering a story on saccharin and microbes that was conducted in mice, but additional experiments in humans showed similar findings that tied the two together.
4. Who’s your audience?
Multiple writers said that they cover animal studies frequently if they’re writing for a highly educated, primarily scientific readership, such as The New Scientist, Scientific American, Nature or trade publications. The bar is still much higher for covering animal studies at these publications, but they may be more interested in the study if it has truly surprising, important results that other researchers—especially lab scientists—would be interested in reading about.
5. Does the study help us understand the actual limitations of animal studies?
Sometimes covering an animal study is a great way to help the public better understand animal studies in general, whether it’s how they are valuable to research or how limited they are in what they say about humans. Science writer Olivia Campbell found it interesting to consider what scientists can and cannot learn from studying rats induced to show “depression-like” symptoms. Landhuis wrote for Nature about how to make mice better models for human disease than they currently might be. The importance of helping readers understand how science works cannot be overstated.
