ABSTRACT

Communication between scientists and animal technicians is considered important for creating a ‘culture of care’ in facilities that use animals in scientific research. For example, the Brown report, which investigated alleged failures of animal care at Imperial College London, noted the physical and social separation between animal technicians and scientists as a problem that delimited a culture of care. This paper seeks to better understand the communicative relationships between scientists and animal technicians in this context. We conducted a survey of scientists working in the UK who use animals in their research (n = 230), asking who they spoke with about various aspects related to using animals in research. We found that scientists communicated with technicians about operational issues, while they spoke with other scientists about experimental design as well as moral questions and concerns. We probe the meaning of these communicative relationships using narrative analysis of semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with consenting survey respondents (n = 14). Analytically, this paper seeks to bridge social network analysis with geographies of care through a shared concern with relations of power.

摘要

科学家和动物技术人员之间的交流被认为对于在科学研究中使用动物的设施中创造“关怀文化”很重要。例如，布朗报告调查了伦敦帝国理工学院所谓的动物护理失败事件，指出动物技术人员和科学家之间的身体和社会分离是界定护理文化的一个问题。本文旨在更好地理解在此背景下科学家和动物技术人员之间的交流关系。我们对在英国工作并在研究中使用动物的科学家 (n = 230) 进行了一项调查，询问他们与谁讨论了与在研究中使用动物相关的各个方面。我们发现科学家与技术人员就操作问题进行沟通，当他们与其他科学家讨论实验设计以及道德问题和担忧时。我们使用对同意的调查受访者 (n = 14) 进行的半结构化、定性访谈的叙述分析来探究这些交流关系的意义。在分析上，本文试图通过对权力关系的共同关注，将社会网络分析与关怀地理联系起来。