Animal welfare science faces challenges of reproducibility and research transparency that affect the reliability of evidence used to make welfare decisions for billions of animals.
The scientific foundations of animal welfare policy depend on the quality and reliability of the research they draw on. If welfare science suffers from the same reproducibility problems as other fields - small samples, publication bias, undisclosed flexibility in analysis - then the evidence base for decisions affecting billions of animals may be weaker than assumed. The welfare science community is actively addressing these issues through pre-registration, open data sharing, systematic review, and replication studies. Building a more rigorous and transparent evidence base benefits animals by ensuring that welfare standards and interventions are grounded in reliable science rather than plausible but unreplicated findings. Investment in open science infrastructure for animal welfare research is therefore a meaningful welfare intervention.