37. Constrained, contingent, and conflicted: complicating acceptance of animal research through an analysis of writing from the UK Mass Observation Project

Abstract

How UK publics feel about animal research is often explained in terms of ‘acceptance’ or ‘opposition’, with polls and surveys being widely used to measure levels of acceptance towards the issue across time, location, and demographics. Such studies and the reporting of their findings routinely overlook the contexts in which such expressions of acceptance emerge, the expectations that are built into it, and the feelings that infuse it. This paper aims to complicate understandings of acceptance in this area by examining how ‘acceptance’ towards animal research is constrained by claims that there is a current lack of alternatives, contingent on the development of tangible and timely clinical outputs, and complicated by moral conflict and ambivalence. To do so, I draw on a qualitative analysis of writing on animal research from the Mass Observation Project, a UK national life-writing project. I conclude that common representations of ‘acceptance’ around animal research are problematic and argue that without consideration of the conditions and contextuality of expressions of acceptance, important socio-ethical concerns towards and expectations of animal research are likely to be left unaddressed in science-society dialogues and decision-making. This risks undermining the bioscience community’s emphasis on fostering better communication and engagement with publics and, further, corroding the social contract seen as legitimising the scientific use of animals.