Models & animals
Should animal models copy the DSM?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Validity criteria that ask animals to match whole DSM syndromes should be dropped in favour of well-understood symptoms or endophenotypes.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Philosophy of psychiatry critique of Willner-style syndrome-matching validity for animal models
- N
- Conceptual analysis of validity criteria; not an empirical sample
- Population
- Animal models of mental disorder validated against DSM syndromes
- Outcome
- Replace whole-syndrome validity targets with symptoms or endophenotypes
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
Face validity as symptom similarity pushed researchers toward modelling entire syndromes. Two people can both meet DSM depression without sharing any symptoms. The author argues we should abandon the DSM as the validation standard and follow calls to model well-understood symptom clusters and endophenotypes.
Methodology
The author reconstructs how mid-century comparative psychiatrists such as McKinney and Bunney tried to model whole syndromes, how Willner’s predictive/face/construct validity packaged that ambition, and why heterogeneity in DSM depression makes one-to-one mapping fail.
Limitations
This is not a new mouse experiment and does not prove any particular endophenotype is valid. The NIMH funding figures are cited as historical context, not as this paper’s own accounting.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Matching whole DSM syndromes is a bad validity test; well-understood symptoms or endophenotypes are the better target.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
ART papers ask whether preventing trial-and-error on women and children is a weighty enough aim to justify animal work, a question separated from 3Rs refinement — not the same issue as psychiatric-model validity.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
ART papers ask whether preventing trial-and-error on women and children is a weighty enough aim to justify animal work, a question separated from 3Rs refinement — not the same issue as psychiatric-model validity.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.