• Question: do you use animals in your job

    Asked by tarax to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 21 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      we do look at biological materials here, but its just as likely to be a human sample than anything else. Because we do experiments on what other scientists bring in we can never be sure. But the UK has some pretty specific rules for animal testing so we don’t see too many samples.

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      My job nowadays is in the funding and policy side of things, so no requirement for animals there!

      In fact I can’t think there is any call for animals in physics research, although there was a physicist who levitated a frog in a magnetic field: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E (explained here: http://www.physics.org/facts/frog-really.asp). Don’t think it did the frog any harm, it probably did feel a bit peculiar afterwards though.

    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      No. Like Mark sometimes there are samples of living cells that we analyse, but no animals.

    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      No, I don’t use any animals. There are some absolutely massive spiders that seem to live in the lab though.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      No animals here, just good clean particles.

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