Palmer Alexandra, Greenhough Beth, Hobson-West Pru, Davies Gail, Message Reuben
School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Soc Anim. 2023 Aug 11;32(7-8):744-765. doi: 10.1163/15685306-bja10139.
This paper examines discourses around "volunteering" in animal research. Through a qualitative textual analysis of the scientific literature using animals in behavioral and psychological research, we demonstrate that "voluntary" and related terms are used by scientists in a variety of distinct ways, which carry a range of ethical and political connotations. While any reference to volunteering might be assumed to imply free, unconstrained, and unpaid participation in an activity, in the animal research literature the term is often used simply to signal a lack of physical restraint, even though other human-imposed constraints are at play. Though truly voluntary behavior may be impossible, we nevertheless argue that there is a case for seeing use of the language of volunteering as an ethical or political move in which scientists aim to highlight a goal of minimizing human control, promoting animal welfare, or representing their research as ethically acceptable.
本文探讨了动物研究中围绕“自愿参与”的诸多论述。通过对行为和心理学研究中使用动物的科学文献进行定性文本分析，我们表明，科学家以多种不同方式使用“自愿”及相关词汇，这些词汇带有一系列伦理和政治内涵。虽然任何关于自愿参与的表述可能都被认为意味着自由、不受约束且无偿参与一项活动，但在动物研究文献中，该术语常常仅用于表明不存在身体限制，即便其他人为施加的限制依然存在。尽管真正的自愿行为或许是不可能的，但我们仍认为，将自愿参与这一表述的使用视为一种伦理或政治举措是有道理的，科学家旨在通过这一举措强调将人类控制降至最低、促进动物福利或使他们的研究在伦理上可被接受的目标。
