From crisis to opportunity – systematic heterogenization as a tool to improve reproducibility and reduce animal use

Life sciences are currently facing a reproducibility crisis. To counteract this, it is essential to identify sources of poor reproducibility as well as to overcome these problems. In the talk, I will summarize the current debate, discuss potential reasons, and present first steps that have already been undertaken to improve reproducibility in animal research. By the example of classical behavioural phenotyping studies, I will particularly highlight the role strict standardization plays in the crisis and introduce the concept of systematic heterogenization as an alternative strategy to deal with variation in animal studies. Briefly, systematic variation of experimental conditions is assumed to benefit the robustness of research findings, and hence to improve their reproducibility. Interestingly, however, systematic heterogenization could not only contribute to better reproducibility, but also pave the way for more effective reduction strategies in the best meaning of the 3R concept.