Because there are some conversations you have to have with your kids even if you wish you didn’t have to have them:
Dr. Free-Ride: I wanted to talk to you about a situation that has come up for a friend of mine and is a little worrisome. So, you know I went down to UCLA the other week, right?
Younger offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do you know what I was there for?
Elder offspring: A conference?
Category Archives: Research with animals
Some modest proposals for animal rights supporters looking to make their case without resorting to harassment, intimidation, or violence.
I take it that a good number of animal rights supporters feel that their position is philosophically well-grounded, intuitively appealing, and compatible with the flourishing of humans as well as of non-human animals.
As such, I would argue that animal rights supporters can, and should, advance their position without resorting to tactics that depend on harassment, intimidation, or violence. (At least some animal rights supporters agree.) Especially since the hope is to win the hearts and minds of the larger public to the cause of animal rights, supporters of this position might want to hold on to the moral high ground.
How can they do this? Here are four options that leap to mind:
Our cause is good, so our tactics don’t need to be?
Earlier this week, I related a situation I found alarming in which a scientist and his children were targeted for harassment because he dared to express the view that research with animals plays an important role in answering scientific questions that matter to scientists and to the public. I was not alone in decrying these tactics. At least one animal rights group also condemned them.
Given that the post was pretty clearly directed at the question of tactics, I am frankly puzzled by this comment from Douglas Watts:
When I see mainstream “science” commit itself to a program which phases out vivisection by date certain, this post would have credibility. Without such a pledge and plan, you are basically saying that scientists are separate from the rest of society and should not be held to the standards the rest of society must live up to. In doing so, you are making the anti-vivisectionists point for them: scientists are unwilling and unable to clean up their own house.
If I’m understanding it, the logical structure of what Douglas Watts is claiming here is something like this:
There are animal rights supporters who take a public stand against violence and intimidation.
We don’t have to agree about whether animal research is ethical or scientifically valuable to agree that some tactics for pursuing your view are harmful to civil society.
Bruins for Animals, the student organization at UCLA that was instrumental in organizing the recent dialogue about the science and ethics of animal based research, understands this, and they are not afraid to call out the people “on their side” who opt for threats and intimidation:
Time to get mad. Ways to speak up.
When I told you about the infuriating tactics extreme animal rights activists are turning against Dario Ringach for even daring to express his view that animal research can be important, a number of you asked in the comments, “What can we do besides signing petitions and writing blog posts?”
David Jentsch offers some concrete ideas about where to start making your stand:
Time to get mad. Time to speak up.
I need to share with you a situation that is infuriating.
It’s infuriating to me, and I believe it should be infuriating to anyone who values a civil society worth the name.
Harassment drove UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach out of primate research in 2006. This was not just angry phone calls and email messages. We’re talking about people in masks banging on the windows of his house in the night, scaring his kids. Without support on this front from other scientists or from UCLA, Dario abandoned research that he believed to be important so that he could keep his family safe.
Since then, there has been more violence against researchers who work with animals. UCLA started to stand up for its researchers in the face of incendiary devices. Scientists started calling for an end to violent tactics in their journals, and in petitions, and in demonstrations.
As someone with experience being on the receiving end of such tactics, Dario stood up to decry their use against other scientists.
Video of the UCLA panel discussion on animal-based research.
As promised, here’s the video of the February 16, 2010 panel discussion at UCLA about the science and ethics of animal-based research, sponsored by Bruins for Animals and Pro-Test for Science.
UCLA Panel on Science and Ethics of Animal Research from Dario Ringach on Vimeo.
The video runs for about 2.5 hours, so you might want to grab a glass of water or a cup of coffee before you launch it.
Some preliminary thoughts on the UCLA panel discussion on animal-based research.
The panel discussion took place, as planned, on the evening of Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at UCLA. The hall was well-populated, if not completely packed, with members of the UCLA community. (Honestly, for week 7 of a 10-week quarter, during a spell of lovely weather, I’m impressed they had such a high turnout of students.) There was also a serious security presence (which the university felt was needed in light of past instances where strong feelings have been displayed in more than just words).
Both Pro-Test for Science and Bruins for Animals deserve huge props for all the work they put into planning and coordinating the event. For their troubles, Bruins for Animals had to put up with a fair amount of abuse from people who were nominally on their side. Nonetheless, they stuck to their guns and worked very hard to create an event that was a dialogue, not a debate.
The event itself was videotaped (from two cameras), with the hope that the picture and sound quality will be good enough that the video can be posted online. When it is, I’ll post a link to it so you can see it for yourself. In the meantime, I’ll give you my impressions as a participant (which is to say, you shouldn’t count on my for an account that is complete in all its details or even very objective).
Dialogue about animal research: save the date!
For those of you who have heard me issue calls for dialogue (not debate) on the subject of research with non-human animals — especially if you’re in the Los Angeles area — I’m pleased to announce that there’s an event coming up in February that’s aimed at fostering just such a dialogue, in the three-dimensional world. Here’s the announcement:
How did we do at dialogue?
In a recent post, I issued an invitation:
I am always up for a dialogue on the issue of our moral relation to animals and on the ethical use of animals in scientific research. If folks inclined towards the animal rights stance want to engage in a dialogue right here, in the comments on this post, I am happy to host it.
(I will not, however, be hosting a debate. A dialogue is different from a debate, and a dialogue is what I’m prepared to host.)
That post has received upward of 250 comments, so there was certainly some sort of exchange going on. But, did we manage to have something approaching a dialogue, or did we end up slipping into a debate?
In considering this question, I want to offer a grid I encountered in the Difficult Dialogues Initiative at San Jose State University, adapted from material from the Public Conversations Project. The grid compares characteristics of dialogues and arguments (which are not precisely the same as debates but are probably close enough for our purposes here):