Good Practice Guideline for Preclinical Alcohol Research: The STRINGENCY Framework

Research in the field of preclinical alcohol research, but also science in general, has a problem: Many published scientific results cannot be repeated. As a result, findings from preclinical research often do not translate well to humans, causing increasing disappointment and calls for restructuring of preclinical research, that is, better reproducibility of preclinical research. However, the replication crisis is an inherent problem in biomedical research. Replication failures are not only due to small experimental variations but are often the result of poor methodology. In response to the replication crisis, numerous guidelines and recommendations have been proposed to promote transparency, rigor, and reproducibility in scientific research. What is missing today is a framework that integrates all the confusing information that results from all these guidelines and recommendations. Here we present STRINGENCY, an integrative approach to good practice guidelines for preclinical alcohol research, which can also apply to behavioral research in general and which aims to improve preclinical research to better prepare it for translation and minimize the "valley of death" in translational research. STRINGENCY includes systematic review and, when possible, meta-analysis prior to study design, sample size calculation, preregistration, multisite experiments, scientific data management (FAIR), reporting of data using ARRIVE, generalization of research data, and transparent publications that allow reporting of null results. We invite the scientific community to adopt STRINGENCY to improve the reliability and impact of preclinical alcohol research.