Animal welfare science, performance metrics, and proxy failure.

Area of Science:

• Animal welfare science
• Behavioral science

Background:

• Measures can become worse targets over time, a common observation across scientific fields.
• John et al. proposed a unified phenomenon explaining this temporal degradation of measures used as targets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To apply the framework by John et al. to animal welfare science.
• To present a pragmatic solution to reduce the impact of measures worsening as targets.
• To explore the broader applicability of the proposed solution in other scientific domains.

Main Methods:

• Framework application to animal welfare science.
• Development of a pragmatic mitigation strategy.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of the framework's utility in animal welfare.
• Identification of a practical solution to counteract measures worsening over time.

Conclusions:

• The unified phenomenon is relevant to animal welfare science.
• A pragmatic solution can effectively reduce the impact of this phenomenon.
• The solution may have cross-domain applicability.