People & Professions

Determining the extent to which changes in professional laboratory roles challenge the stability of the animal research nexus

Understanding the animal research nexus requires recognition of how the professional roles of laboratory staff are constituted, enacted and challenged. The People and Professions Project investigated how professionals working in the laboratory, including veterinarians, are seen by wider publics and, conversely, how those who work in the lab construct images of the public.

Two primary programmes of work were carried out. The first involved an exploration of how publics reflect and write about animal research. This was explored via a PhD studentship awarded to Renelle McGlacken. Renelle analysed the results of a Mass Observation Archive commission to explore how ‘publics’ construct animal research, and considered whether this method has potential for overcoming traditional methodological pitfalls. The team also ran public engagement activities via the 'labelling' project, which explored the question of labelling medicines as developed using animals. 

The second was to use in-depth interviews to better understand the role of Named Veterinary Surgeons who work in the animal laboratory; a group that has been historically under-researched. The team also ran an international conference on the question of veterinary expertise. 

The overall aim was to consider the extent to which changes in professional laboratory roles are challenging the stability of the animal research nexus, and to identify implications for the future of governance, training and public engagement. The People and Professions project was led by Professor Pru Hobson-West at the University of Nottingham. 

Relevant, tagged site content:

Engagement Activities

This engagement activity invites people to draw a label which could be used to denote the role of animal research in the production of medicines.

Publications

The paper builds on earlier an earlier blog by Ally Palmer called 'Can animals volunteer to participate in research?' We use the questions rasied by Ally to examine together the different ways that scientific researchers talk about animals' volunteering in research papers and reflect on the ethical importance of this discourse.

This book features highlights from the Animal Research Nexus Programme to demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to understanding what is created through animal procedures - including constitutional forms of research governance, different institutional cultures of care, the professional careers of scientists and veterinarians, collaborations with patients and publics, and research animals, specially bred for experiments or surplus to requirements.

Developing the idea of the animal research nexus, this book explores how connections and disconnections are made between these different elements, how these have reshaped each other historically, and how they configure the current practice and policy of UK animal research.

The concept of advocacy is of increasing importance to the veterinary profession internationally. However, there are concerns around the ambiguity and complexity of acting as an advocate in practice. This paper explores what ‘animal advocacy’ involves for veterinarians working in the domain of animal research, where they are responsible for advising on health and welfare.

The veterinary profession has been relatively understudied in social science, though recent work has highlighted the geographic dimensions of veterinary expertise. This paper draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with Named Veterinary Surgeons (NVSs) working in UK animal research to demonstrate how and why they distinguish between ethical aspects of veterinary work in the spaces of the laboratory and general clinical practice.

This short report offers a review of some of the literature on reflexive practice in qualitative research teams. In bringing together some of the learnings and resources around team-based reflexivity, this report may offer a useful overview for planning and enacting future team-based research endeavours.

In the UK, claims are often made that public support for animal research is stronger when such use is categorised as for medical purposes. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of writing from the Mass Observation Project, a national writing project documenting everyday life in Britain, this paper suggests that the necessity of using animals for medical research is not a given but understood relationally through interactions with inherent vulnerability. This paper stresses the ubiquity of ambivalence towards uses of animals for medical research, complicating what is meant by claims that such use is ‘acceptable’, and suggests that science-society dialogues on animal research should accommodate different modes of thinking about health. In demonstrating how understandings of health are bound up with ethical obligations to care for both human and non-human others, this paper reinforces the importance of interspecies relations in health and illness and in the socio-ethical dimensions of biomedicine.

This paper explores what happens to care, and decisions about ending and extending life, when research animals become pets and pets become research animals. To do this, we draw on in- depth qualitative research on (i) rehoming of laboratory animals, (ii) veterinary clinical research, and (iii) the role of the Named Veterinary Surgeon (NVS) in UK animal research. Key contributions of our work include highlighting: how care roles can be split; the impor- tance of considering speculative and in-practice elements of care; the context-dependency and multiplicity of practices of killing in the veterinary clinic and laboratory; and the flexibility and changing nature of animal categories.

This thesis explores how the topic of laboratory animal research is related to in everyday life in the UK, providing a sociological analysis of practices of knowing, caring, and constructing necessary biomedical uses of animals. In doing so, it develops the few qualitative studies of societal understandings of animal research, aiming to expand analyses in this area beyond measurement of polarised and static notions of acceptance or opposition. Instead, this thesis approaches understandings of animal research as relational and positional, emerging within particular yet shared social worlds which give the issue meaning in the everyday.

With an established history of controversy in the UK, the use of animals in science continues to generate significant socio-ethical discussion. Here, the figure of ‘the public’ plays a key role. However, dominant imaginaries of ‘the public’ have significant methodological and ethical problems. Examining these, this paper critiques three ways in which ‘the public’ is currently constructed in relation to animal research; namely as un- or mis-informed; homogenous; and holding fixed and extractable views. In considering an alternative to such imaginaries, we turn to the Mass Observation Project (MOP), a national life-writing project in the UK.

Animal research remains a practice marked by controversy and moral dilemma. However, UK science-society dialogues on the issue are increasingly managed via one-way transmissions of information which construct publics as passive and attribute their concerns to a lack of ‘correct’ knowledge. Challenging such assumptions, this paper questions how and why people actively manage their interactions with animal research through entangled practices of knowing and caring. Based on an analysis of writing from the UK Mass Observation Project, this paper explores difficulties and discomforts associated with animal research which can cause strategic withdrawals from engagements with the topic. In doing so, it extends existing concepts of ‘uncomfortable knowledge’ (Rayner) and ‘strategic ignorance’ (McGoey) to develop novel concepts of ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘strategic’ care. Finally, in examining desires to respond to animal research, I engage with Haraway’s notion of ‘response-ability’ to introduce the concepts of ‘responsive caring’ and ‘responsive knowing’.

Blog entry

Written by: Gail Davies

The Animal Research Nexus Programme ran its closing workshop at the end of March (2023) at the

Written by: Pru Hobson-West

By Pru Hobson-West, in conversation with Carlie Sorosiak

Introduction

Written by: Renelle McGlacken

Lately, the Nottingham team have been reflecting on reflecting.

Written by: Alistair Anderson, Pru Hobson-West

 

Over three days in July 2022, colleagues from the UK and beyond gathered online to discuss the thorny question of veterinary expertise.  

Written by: Renelle McGlacken

In my PhD work on societal views towards animal research, I’ve found that the area of cosmetics is often held up as an unambiguous example of the ethical limits of using animals in science, with cosmetic products and procedures providing an easy m

Written by: Annex Admin

We are delighted to publish this guest blog as part of our Coronavirus Connections series.

Written by: Pru Hobson-West

This is one of a series of Animal Research Nexus blogs drawing on our current and past work to explore the human-animal and science-society entanglements in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Written by: Pru Hobson-West

How do publics talk about or reflect on animal research? Can animal research be considered part of everyday life? How can researchers use archives to understand engagement with sensitive topics?

Written by: Ally Palmer

Social scientists and historians have long observed that laboratory and field research are rather different (e.g., Gieryn, 2006; Kohler, 2002).

Events

The Animal Research Nexus Programme is hosting a conference entitled 'Researching Animal Research' on 30th – 31st of March at the Wellcome Collection in London.

Academics at the University of Nottingham are pleased to announce that a conference on Veterinary Expertise is now available for booking!

Have you ever thought about the role that animals play in producing new medicines? Want to try a creative way of thinking about this topic?

For many, talking about animal research remains taboo. As a way of highlighting one of the roles that animal research plays, some have suggested labelling medicines as ‘tested on animals’. But is the act of labelling so simple?

Announcements

The University of Nottingham as part of Midlands Graduate School is now inviting applications for an ESRC Doctoral Studentship in association with our collaborative partner, RSPCA, to commence in October 2019.