Common people
| 22 April, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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While trolling through the new, shiny beta F1000 site (shh! I’m not supposed to tell you about that yet) I noticed that a paper from way back in September last year is still up there on our top ten lists. This was a commentary in J Neurosci saying, among other things, that the
time has come for the scientific community to make a concerted effort in condemning animal-rights extremism and in reaching out to the public to explain our work, its importance, and our commitment to the strictest ethical guidelines of animal research.
Furthermore, say the authors,
A special effort should be made to emphasize the irreplaceable role for nonhuman primates in neuroscience research to the public.
(10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3738-09.2009)
It obviously touched a nerve because it garnered 17 evaluations (and Steve P blogged it), second only to a controversial paper from 2005 on non-Mendelian inheritance in Arabidopsis (that actually could be wrong
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As the individual responsible for making this Freedom of Information request in the UK, I would like to provide readers with more information about its background and purpose.
Far from being “mischievous” this request had a very serious intent. Your report of the case fails to mention the context in which this request was made. In 2006, Oxford University appeared in a high profile national TV documentary programme, which featured information and footage regarding an experiment it planned to undertake on a macaque. At the time the programme was made, Oxford was already subject to a long standing animal rights campaign that included illegal activity and property damage, yet this did not prevent their active participation. PETA UK took the view that as the critical information about the experiment had already been placed in the public domain by the university itself (most notably that they intended to brain damage a monkey and then kill it, plus the identity of the researcher conducting the experiment), the subsequent release of highly technical details from the licence application would be extremely unlikely to increase any existing risk (which was the legal test) and was therefore justified by the public interest in accessing accurate and complete information about this experiment, rather than only the information selectively released by the university itself.
Your entry does not mention that at an earlier stage in the appeals process, the Information Commissioner in fact agreed with us that more information should be released than the university had provided in response to our initial request. Unfortunately, at our subsequent appeal for further disclosure, although the Information Tribunal accepted that there was a public interest in releasing the information, it concluded that risk would have been increased (at the time the request was made). It remains PETA UK’s conviction that this would not have been the case and we are deeply disappointed by this judgment. More significantly, we believe that one effect of this decision could effectively be to allow institutions like Oxford to use British FoI law to selectively release information to their own advantage, which is clearly not in the interests of the informed public and policy debate we all seek.
Alistair Currie
Policy Adviser
PETA UK
Alistair Currie
until PETA comes out and condemns violence and (attempted) murder there can be no ‘policy debate’. Your very own sentence At the time the programme was made, Oxford was already subject to a long standing animal rights campaign that included illegal activity and property damage, yet this did not prevent their active participation (my emphasis) tacitly condones property damage and illegal activity.
I would like to remind readers that PETA itself kills many more animals than it saves.