Background


Few publications describing in vivo and in vitro research report taking measures which might reduce the risk of bias in their findings ()Ioannidis et al., 2014; Macleod et al., 2015), and those which do not report such measures give inflated estimates of biological effects (Crossley et al., 2008, Hirst et al., 2014 ). Measures which may improve the quality of reports of in vivo and in vitro research have been endorsed by a large number of journals, however, there is evidence that this endorsement has not been matched by a substantial increase in the quality of published reports (Baker et al., 2014.)