It is fair to say that the diversity of academia brings downsides in addition to upsides. A monolithic culture tends to mean slow progress: too little is explored at the borders of what is known when one viewpoint prevails at the expense of all others. A diverse culture produces such a variety of standards that it becomes challenging to compare any two studies. The paper-length complaint here is outlines the problems facing any scientist who is engaged in an analysis of published animal study data on the topic of intervening to slow or reverse aging, with a particular focus on the harms produced by a diversity of strategies for scientific controls in life span studies.
The search for interventions to slow down and even reverse aging is a burgeoning field. The literature cites hundreds of supposedly beneficial pharmacological and genetic interventions in model organisms: mice, rats, flies and worms, where research into physiology is routinely accompanied by lifespan data. However, when experimental animals from one article live as long as controls from another article, comparing the results of interventions across studies can yield misleading outcomes. Theoretically, all lifespan data are ripe for re-analysis: we could contrast the molecular targets and pathways across studies and help focus the further search for interventions. Alas, the results of most longevity studies are difficult to compare.
This is in part because there are no clear, universally accepted standards for conducting such experiments or even for reporting such data. The situation is worsened by the fact that the authors often do not describe experimental conditions completely. As a result, works on longevity make up a set of precedents, each of which might be interesting in its own right, yet incoherent and incomparable at least for the reason that in a general context, it may indicate, for example, not prolonging the life of an average organism, but compensating for any genetic abnormalities of a particular sample or inappropriate living conditions. Here we point out specific issues and propose solutions for quality control by checking both inter- and intra-study consistency of lifespan data.
Link: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205604
View the full article at FightAging
