ABSTRACT
Conventional scientific training instructs researchers to avoid empathy with their study subjects in the service of maintaining “objectivity” and warding off “anthropomorphism.” This approach creates an artificial gulf between human and nonhuman worlds, and renders nonhuman beings as radical others without minds or at best, as beings with minds that cannot be known or accessed. Here the authors reconsider the wisdom and utility of this convention in the context of research with other animals, their own field of expertise. The empathy taboo in science raises a number of serious ethical and scientific concerns. The former has been elucidated by decades of animal welfare and rights scholarship and activism, which have long exposed the unethical treatment of animals in industries like science. The taboo against empathy in science has a long and convoluted history that originates in part from human-centric assumptions about other animals’ minds.
