BBC science report fail
I usually check the BBC science page just to see what makes "news" in terms of general public science and was a bit disappointed to find the "animal experiments increase again" article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14137335.
What follows is a moderate rant on how science is reported rather than a debate on animal testing
My main issue was the fact that it was implied somehow that this can only be a bad thing that more experiments are being done, rather than balance it with the fact that all the experiments are being conducted for a reason such as to understand how something works, most likely a disease. Thankfully, the article does mention that animals are only used when no other method is avaible or sufficient. Still, it's important to point out that scientists aren't sitting around desperately trying to think of experiments that use animals. I've never been at a meeting where someone says "Sounds like a good idea but isn't there anyway to do the same experiment using a mouse? Got to exceed the quota, you know".
Another paragraph which is a classic case of bad reporting or, even worse, deliberately misleading is this one,
"The statistics show that breeding to produce genetically modified (GM) animals and harmful mutants (an animal with potentially harmful genetic defects) rose by 87,000 to 1.6 million procedures".
The bit in the brackets is the main offender here as it's not 100% clear what the "harmful" is referring to. I know they mean "harmful" to the animal but I do wonder whether the general public may instictively wonder "harmful to me?", which isn't unusual given the way that "GM" is generally percieved as "bad" (I'm not saying "GM" is good/bad here). I think when using emotionally charged words like "GM", the journalist should attempt to rule out any opportunity for misinterpretation.
The rest of the article seems to be equating "more experiments" with "lower regulation of animal testing". I'm not fully up-to-date on said regulations but I'm confident that the regulations in place to conduct an animal experiment are just as high as they were previously (most likely higher). In this case "more experiments" may just mean "more experiments". As the article likes to show us graphs to make some points, it would be nice to include in these graphs what the total number of procedures/experiments are from year to year and what the number of non-animal procedures/experiments are. If this information was present then we'd be able to determine whether the rise is due to there simply being more experiments across the board occurring. For example it may be that the 6% rise in animal procedures is due to a 6% increase in the total number of experiments occurring (animal + non-animal). It's a bit like saying more goals have been scored in the premiership, only to find there are twice as many games played in the season. This extra data would have given the observation a lot more context.
I work on fruit flies/Drosophila, an animal which appears to be largely ignored in this article, although in fairness it states zebrafish and mice are the main cause of the rise. It does strike me as convenient that they always go for the picture of a mouse when it comes to discussing animal testing (if you click on any of the "similar" news links in the article you will see a picture of a mouse appear every time) rather than opt for a fly or microscopic worm photo. Could it be because people tend to find mice a bit more cute than the other candidates? It could just be they think mice are more recognisable. I guess I should be thankful they at least use an animal that is used as a model organism, rather than the most emotive picture they can find.
I do sometimes wish that science articles that can be seen as "damaging" to science could have some kind of peer review system - especially when the article uses "data" in the form of stats. I should also make it clear that I'm not against all the regulations either - it's good to have them in place and if deemed necessary make them stricter.
What follows is a moderate rant on how science is reported rather than a debate on animal testing
My main issue was the fact that it was implied somehow that this can only be a bad thing that more experiments are being done, rather than balance it with the fact that all the experiments are being conducted for a reason such as to understand how something works, most likely a disease. Thankfully, the article does mention that animals are only used when no other method is avaible or sufficient. Still, it's important to point out that scientists aren't sitting around desperately trying to think of experiments that use animals. I've never been at a meeting where someone says "Sounds like a good idea but isn't there anyway to do the same experiment using a mouse? Got to exceed the quota, you know".
Another paragraph which is a classic case of bad reporting or, even worse, deliberately misleading is this one,
"The statistics show that breeding to produce genetically modified (GM) animals and harmful mutants (an animal with potentially harmful genetic defects) rose by 87,000 to 1.6 million procedures".
The bit in the brackets is the main offender here as it's not 100% clear what the "harmful" is referring to. I know they mean "harmful" to the animal but I do wonder whether the general public may instictively wonder "harmful to me?", which isn't unusual given the way that "GM" is generally percieved as "bad" (I'm not saying "GM" is good/bad here). I think when using emotionally charged words like "GM", the journalist should attempt to rule out any opportunity for misinterpretation.
The rest of the article seems to be equating "more experiments" with "lower regulation of animal testing". I'm not fully up-to-date on said regulations but I'm confident that the regulations in place to conduct an animal experiment are just as high as they were previously (most likely higher). In this case "more experiments" may just mean "more experiments". As the article likes to show us graphs to make some points, it would be nice to include in these graphs what the total number of procedures/experiments are from year to year and what the number of non-animal procedures/experiments are. If this information was present then we'd be able to determine whether the rise is due to there simply being more experiments across the board occurring. For example it may be that the 6% rise in animal procedures is due to a 6% increase in the total number of experiments occurring (animal + non-animal). It's a bit like saying more goals have been scored in the premiership, only to find there are twice as many games played in the season. This extra data would have given the observation a lot more context.
I work on fruit flies/Drosophila, an animal which appears to be largely ignored in this article, although in fairness it states zebrafish and mice are the main cause of the rise. It does strike me as convenient that they always go for the picture of a mouse when it comes to discussing animal testing (if you click on any of the "similar" news links in the article you will see a picture of a mouse appear every time) rather than opt for a fly or microscopic worm photo. Could it be because people tend to find mice a bit more cute than the other candidates? It could just be they think mice are more recognisable. I guess I should be thankful they at least use an animal that is used as a model organism, rather than the most emotive picture they can find.
I do sometimes wish that science articles that can be seen as "damaging" to science could have some kind of peer review system - especially when the article uses "data" in the form of stats. I should also make it clear that I'm not against all the regulations either - it's good to have them in place and if deemed necessary make them stricter.