Handling research animal ethics

Research on animal welfare is organized around a distinction between the care of animals and their use in experiments. Nicole Nelson draws on ethnographic fieldwork in a behavioral neuroscience laboratory to complicate this presumed division between science and welfare. Using the case study of animal handling, she explores how scientists use animal welfare concepts to aid them in their experimental work. The inter-subjective stances and handling techniques promoted by welfare professionals, for example, provide scientists with a means of assessing and maintaining a controlled laboratory environment. She examines both the productive and the problematic aspects of science-welfare interactions in animal research.

Nicole Nelson, PhD, MA
Department of the History of Science University of Wisconsin-Madison