Talking about animal research: Scientists and their institutions need to communicate more proactively to counter claims of mistreatment by animal rights activists.

Abstract

In June 2015, the extremist group Animal Liberation Front (ALF) destroyed two trucks belonging to Harlan Laboratories in Ontario, Canada. In the same month, Nikos Logothetis, a renowned neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, announced that he would abandon his research on nonhuman primates after months of harassment and slander from animal rights activists. In May 2014 and April 2013, animal rights activists forced their way into the Pharmacology Department of the University of Milan, Italy. They spread paint, broke glass, and removed information tags from animal cages, destroying years of work. In April 2014, the Tierversuchsgegner Bundesrepublik Deutschland placed a full‐page advertisement in a number of Germany's national and regional newspapers, accusing neuroscientist Andreas Kreiter at the University of Bremen of “torturing” nonhuman primates in “pseudoscientific” experiments. > … reluctance to speak up leads to a paucity of information about the use of animals in research, which benefits animal rights activists. Most scientists are fortunate that they do not become the target of such attacks. Nonetheless, all scientists who work with animals are indirectly affected by animal rights activism, because activists strike at random and spread fear. “Even if they don't target you directly, they have an incredible impact on the attitude of scientists. They spread reluctance among people to engage in a public debate,” said David Jentsch, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), who has been personally attacked and is now fighting back. However, this reluctance to speak up leads to a paucity of information about the use of animals in research, which benefits animal rights activists. “We delivered an informational void to the public and then stepped aside to allow fanatics to fill it with all kinds of fiction,” said Cindy Buckmaster, Director of the Center for …