Invited review: Completeness of reporting of experiments: REFLECTing on a year of animal trials in the Journal of Dairy Science

摘要

Reproducibility is an essential element of the scientificprocess, and it requires clear and complete reporting ofstudy design, conduct, and analysis. In the human andanimal health literature, incomplete reporting is associatedwith biased effect estimates. Moreover, incompletereporting precludes knowledge synthesis and undervaluesthe resources allocated to the primary research.The Reporting Guidelines for Randomized ControlledTrials for Livestock and Food Safety (REFLECT)statement, published in 2010, is a checklist developedby expert consensus to provide guidance on what studyelements should be reported in any intervention trial(designed experiment) involving livestock. The Journalof Dairy Science (JDS) has recently endorsed the use ofreporting guidelines. To assess the status of reportingof controlled experiments in JDS and to provide a baselinefor future comparison, we evaluated the reportingof 18 items from the REFLECT statement checklist ina sample of 137 controlled trials published in JDS in2017. Two reviewers independently screened titles andabstracts for relevance and then evaluated a sampleof 120 papers reporting controlled trials (experimentalstudies involving at least one intervention and onecomparison or control group), using yes or no questions.Although some items, such as treatment detailsand statistical analysis, were well reported, other areas,including sample size justification, allocation concealment,blinding, study flow, baseline data, and ancillaryanalyses, were often not reported or were incompletelydescribed. This work highlights the need for authorsand reviewers to take advantage of guidelines andchecklists for reporting. Adherence to reporting guidelinescan help improve the completeness of reporting ofresearch, expedite and better inform the peer-reviewprocess, increase clarity for the reader, and allow forknowledge synthesis, such as meta-analysis, all of whichserve to increase the value of the work conducted.