The vertebrate animal section of a grant proposal from federal agencies such as the NIH requires the PI to address four criteria: description of procedures; justifications; minimization of pain and distress; and method of euthanasia. In particular, a concise description of the proposed procedures to be used for live animals must be provided with enough details for evaluation by study section or review panel. Therefore, the funded research grant to Jones must have had enough details of the animal experiments to have been reviewed and approved by its funding agency.

Jones’ findings using her technology have been published in respected journals, suggesting her methods have been peer-reviewed by referees with appropriate expertise in the field and accepted by the journals as well. Most journals require authors to include a statement in their manuscript that live vertebrate animal experiments have been reviewed and approved by the IACUC.

As all federal funded grants also require congruency with the IACUC, the studies proposed by Jones must have been approved by the IACUC before the grant was officially funded. We suspect that the IACUC protocol application may be a de novo renewal of Jones’ previously approved protocol. Therefore, Jones’ technology was previously reviewed and approved by the IACUC. Furthermore, Jones’ pilot studies had previously been asked for, reviewed, and approved three years ago, indicating that Jones and her team have appropriate expertise to conduct studies on the activation of rabbit spinal neurons by magnetic fields. We agree that another pilot experiment is not necessary.

While it is important to note that as new information becomes available, investigators may need to make changes to previously approved animal protocols, it is not very clear how the publications questioned the reproducibility of the technology used by Jones. If this is just a general discussion of her technology, it is generally not a concern from the IACUC’s perspective. The IACUC may raise concern if these publications provide details of apparent flaws and experimental evidence in Jones’ technology. It is understandable that a technology may not be fully reproduced by another laboratory without appropriate training and detailed technical support, especially for vertebrate animal-related methods. The lack of detailed descriptions of the technology is often due to limited space for the Materials and Methods section in most journals. Certainly it would be of concern if no other labs could reproduce the technology and had detailed protocols from Jones. However, it seems that her technology is similarly done in other labs.

Taken together, we are more likely to approve this protocol considering that Jones has a reviewed and funded federal grant, prior peer-reviewed publications, and a previously approved IACUC protocol using this technology.