FELIX

Editorial

Behaving like animals

This week brings some news about the allegations of animal cruelty levelled against Imperial. They’re rushing to the rescue with a three month long investigation. In other words “let’s just kick this can into the distance, and then write a report that will be long and boring and hopefully nobody will read”. Of course you couldn’t have a two week investigation and find everything there is to know, but it definitely feels like the PR machine is in overdrive here. Sorry to be cynical. If they were serious, they could just walk up to the researchers now and give all involved in animal testing a pop quiz. If they don’t know details they should, well, then there is cause for concern.

They will interview people, who will probably be like Rebekah Brooks at Leveson and just say that they remember no specific details of any specific events. In the groups that carry out this research it’s likely that it would be obvious who told on you if you get found out to have behaved inappropriately (sorry to go all school playground on you). Therefore it is likely that those bystanders will not really want to then have to spend another however many years in an office with someone they just got in to trouble. It sounds weird to put it like that, but I fear that may happen with this investigation.

At the heart of this is really just what happens to many people in ...