Provide names of other journalists involved.
Lisa Hoffman, Thomas Hargrove, Anna Mitchell
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
May 2-29
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Despite decades of effort to reduce use of animals in medical tests, the practice is still pervasive and widespread, with experiments ongoing in every state, and as divisive as ever. Proponents and foes agree only that efforts to develop alternatives to animal models need to be expedited, but most changes are happening in public, not private, science.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
USDA inspection reports, annual summary reports, supplemented by data collected from several animal rights groups. No new foias were needed, but were threatened to speed release of latest data.
Explain types of human sources used.
Medical researchers, animal rights investigators, humane agents, veterinarians, USDA officials. Individual profiles of several people on both sides of the issue allowed more depth and human interest.
Results:
Local reactions to revelations about what experiments are taking place, calls for tighter regulation of suppliers from some local officials. Many papers did local sidebars on institutions in their market. The investigation at Clemson, reported by the Anderson Independent-Mail’s Anna Mitchell was included in final reprint and web presentation as an example of this, but was not part of the orginal series.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No challenges. Continue to report new allegations of abuse from various places, update on research chimp status after a NAS report released in December.
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Relatively few institutions want to talk about what they’re doing; getting work documented is tedious and even routine records requests can lag, but only when you have paper are labs likely to react. Keep in mind there is a wide spectrum of opinion about tests and human treatment both among researchers and opponents.