The issue focused on whether a study funded by the NIH using human data could be accepted for publication in an international scientific journal with strong peer review. The study, led by Gordon Gallup and Hanan Sandalow of New York University in the US and published in the journal Brain, looked at the effect of a drug to block brain-derived neurotrophic factor in rats suffering from depression. The study has been criticized because the methods used to get the data from the rats were considered unethical, as were the large data volumes