动物行为研究中不可忽视的盲实验法

The Role of Blinded Methods in the Studies of Animal Behavior

被广泛应用于临床医学、药理学和心理学等学科中的盲实验法,是一种为避免由于人为主观性而对实验观测结果产生偏差的实验设计方法。然而,该方法在动物行为研究领域一直不被重视。近年来有学者逐渐意识到这个问题,并通过文献综述和分析,发现大部分需要采用盲实验法的研究均忽略了此设计方法,使得其研究结果的效应量明显高于采用盲实验法的研究,说明实验中观测者的主观偏见对研究结果造成了影响。本文通过对盲实验法的介绍,强调了其在动物行为研究中的重要性,并对其在该研究领域中的应用进行了阐述和建议。

In scientific researches it is very necessary and important to exclude the negative impact of subjective preferences and expectations on experiment from the observers. The blinded method, which is commonly used in clinical medicine, pharmacology and psychology, aims to avoid the subjective bias by observers such as expectation. However, such method has largely been neglected in the studies of animal behavior. Recent reviews found that most studies, which blinded methods were needed, did not perform an experiment with blinding design. The effect size of such studies were significantly larger than which the blinded methods were used. Such bias would inevitably influence the validity of the scientific data and mislead the readers and further studies. Therefore, we introduced the blinded methods and emphasized their role in the studies of animal behavior. We also illustrated the application of this method and provided suggestions for the studies of animal behavior in the future.