National Anti-Vivisection Society:

Science is a good thing. Prior to the advancements made possible by science, most people did not own a book, were illiterate, some did not even own clothes, worked unprotected in the hot sun and through the cold winters, did not have modern conveniences like oven and refrigerators, had no entertainment with which they could temporarily escape their hardships, and rarely ventured further than a few miles from their birthplace. Many people experienced hunger and disease and most disease was life-threatening. Childbirth was frequently lethal for mother and child.

Today we have indoor plumbing, air conditioners, refrigerators, ovens and stoves, CAT, PET and MRI scanners, sterile operating rooms, anesthetics, TV (for good or bad), theatres, radio, transistors and computers, lasers, even knowledge of life itself vis-à-vis the DNA molecule.

Not understanding science and logic has downsides. Many atrocities can be traced back to fallacious reasoning; either it was used to justify the atrocities or it led to the atrocities directly. In any event, the population as a whole believed the fallacy and tragedy followed.

And, like it or not, society today is more influenced by developments in science than anything else.

Science is the best philosophy for understanding the material world because it has had the best track record when tested, as evidenced by technology. If a theory or paradigm cannot be proven false (or if the adherents of the concept refuse to acknowledge that it has been proven false), then the endeavor is not considered science. This will be important in our upcoming analysis of animals in science.

For example, testing your horoscope is difficult to do because the predictions made by your horoscope are so vague that many events of the day could be interpreted as having fulfilled the prediction. And, even when the predictions are plainly wrong, the practitioners offer many reasons why it was wrong this particular time but insist it usually works.

Science asks us to look deeper. How many squares are in the diagram below? How many do you see? (Answer appears at the end of this section.)

Some confuse science with the accumulation of facts (a facet of research we will examine); however, science and the accumulation of facts are not synonymous. Martin Curd and J. A. Cover state:

“…Truth by itself cannot be sufficient as a characteristic of the goal of science. This is relevant because so many of the true statements we could make about the natural world have little or no scientific value. Imagine, for example, that a biologist wants to increase our store of scientific knowledge by counting the precise number of hairs on individual dogs at various times on various days, not to test a theory or experiment with a drug to prevent hair loss but simply to know the canine hair count for its own sake. Even if the information that the biologist collects is true, it has negligible scientific value…[By contrast] Scientists are interested…in the form of general theories and laws with predictive power. These criteria of scientific excellence - generality and predictive power - and many others besides (such as explanatory power and simplicity) are among the cognitive values of science. They are not the same as truth.”

Historically, before concepts could be tested, opinions and counter-opinions were offered in dispute of the issue. This was called critical discourse. Historically, and even now, if we cannot test certain concepts or phenomena, critical discourse was the final explanation for the concept or phenomenon.

But the philosophy of science contends that all disagreements about matters of fact in the material world are, in principle, open to rational clarification and resolution. So science can move human understanding about the material world from the opinion/critical discourse phase, albeit opinion based on observation, logic and rational thought to fact, be those facts partial or comprehensive.

Predictability most readily and reliably distinguishes between science and pseudoscience.
Science allows predictability. The difference between astrology and astronomy is that while your astrologer will occasionally get your horoscope correct the astronomer can tell you where the planet Venus will be every day for the next millennium.

However, science is not all encompassing and cannot address some very important issues:

Science is suspect these days because of the harm or potential harm that has resulted from scientific discoveries. Bertrand Russell said,

“Science is partly agreeable, partly disagreeable. It is agreeable through the power it gives us of manipulating our environment, and to a small but important minority it is agreeable because it affords intellectual satisfactions. It is disagreeable because . . . it assumes . . . the power of predicting [and manipulating] human actions; in this respect it seems to reduce human power.”

The atomic bomb, pollution from gasoline engines, factory farming, Styrofoam cups, damming rivers for electricity, animal experimentation, and so on are the direct or indirect result of scientific discoveries. But one needs to distinguish between science and technology.

Science discovers truths about the universe while technology takes this knowledge and uses it to create vaccines, medicines, surgical instruments, bombs, genetically modified organisms, biological weapons, and so forth. Technology, not science or the scientific method, is the villain/hero. Science merely discovers truth that then allows technology to develop. The scientific method may play a role in technological advancements, but when people criticize science, they usually mean to criticize technology. Criticizing the scientific method for the exploits of corporations that produce unethical technologies is like criticizing Henry Ford for making automobiles because the use of energy inefficient cars causes massive pollution.

In the end, science and science alone offers hope to people with AIDS (PWAs), the millions suffering from malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries, and for finding a reusable nonpolluting energy source. Science has cured diseases and many that have not been cured we have learned how to prevent. PWAs are living longer because of protease inhibitors and other science-derived therapies. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a disease that is not yet preventable, but that can be treated because of science-based (not animal-based) medical discoveries. Many CF patients are living into their 30s.

Science also offers hope to disenfranchised members of society such as the mentally ill of a hundred years ago. At that time, mental illness was thought a curse from God or evidence of sloth or evil doing. Science came along and said, “Mental illness is a broken brain, just like a broken bone.” People are not to blame for events beyond their control. Science vis-à-vis Newton, Pasteur, and others have relieved people of the guilt they used to feel when they became sick, when the crops failed, when they had a deformed offspring, or when they just happened to be born female and the community needed a virgin to sacrifice. One reason we credit AIDS to a virus and give people drugs instead of condemning PWAs, is because science tells us that HIV causes AIDS, not any moral or ethical deficiency on behalf of the patient.

Science has also done much for animals. Dogs need no longer die of distemper, rabies or parvo because vaccines are available. Chemotherapy can, in some cases, cure the cancers animals suffer from. Cats can receive medications to prolong their life when in renal failure and some can even have kidney transplants.

Jean Greek, DVM is frequently irritated when a client brings her animal in with a very easily treated disease only to hear that the poor dog, cats, ferret, or whatever has been suffering with the condition for years and the only thing the client has tried is alternative medicine because traditional medicine “is dangerous”. Usually the treatment is simple and effective and the animal could have been cured much earlier had the client been more scientifically literate.

She has witnessed many animals die because the client was too ignorant to understand that medical science is the best friend a sick animal ever had. Yes, she realizes how many animals are tortured to death in labs. But again, let’s not throw away the baby with the bathwater. Anything can be used for evil and just because it can be does not mean that it always is or even that it frequently is.

Non-science-based medicine is not good for animals in other ways. Bat hearts are taken out while the bat is alive and eaten as a treatment for asthma. Cobra blood, bear paws, sea turtle eggs, orangutan meat, pythons, geckos, shark cartilage, monkey brains, dried sea horse, monitor lizards, rhinoceros horns, Sumatran tigers, and Malayan sun bears are routinely consumed as treatments for a variety of conditions. (For more on why alternative medicine is not in the best interest of sick animals, see Specious Science, Greek and Greek, Continuum 2002.)

Science is amoral (outside the scope of morality: not concerned with or amenable to moral judgments). What is done with science and how science searches for truth is not. Science is value free vs. scientists and technology, which is not. Science can be used for good or ill but is neither in and of itself.

The Tuskegee syphilis studies and the human experiments in Nazi Germany did lead to truth and new knowledge but, obviously, the way the science was conducted was unethical. The truth discovered was not unethical, just the way it was discovered. Society has a responsibility to regulate what scientists can and cannot do with the knowledge they discover. But if society has minimal understanding of science and the scientific method, this will be impossible. Indeed that is what we see today.

“…society faces the twin problems of lack of public concern with the important advancement of science, and the lack of public concern with the important ethical issues now arising in science and technology, for example we around the topic of genetic engineering. One reason for the dual lack of concern is the wide popularity of pseudoscience and the occult among the general public. Elucidation of how science differs from pseudoscience is the philosophical side of an attempt to overcome public neglect of genuine science.”

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Animals in Scientific Research

What is science?