Observer 8

Outliers, Attention, and Situated Knowledge in a Qualitative Behavioral Assessment of Laboratory Mouse Welfare

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5337699
AutoresMaisie Tomlinson (0000-0002-7801-8441, University of Manchester, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume51
Fascículo1
Páginas29-57
Data de publicação2024-05-28
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/01622439241248499
OpenAlexW4399138247
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas43

This article explores how an innovative animal welfare methodology (Qualitative Behavior Assessment) negotiates subjectivism and objectivism in its distinctive epistemology, as it strives to produce a certain kind of laboratory mouse-a complex, social subject. Through an ethnographic study of the development of a Qualitative Behavior Assessment (QBA) tool for laboratory mouse welfare, I show how QBA foregrounds the animal's lived emotional experience by using qualitative language to assess their welfare, while also relying on statistical methods of validation. Drawing on Mol et al.'s understanding of care as something that parses, handles, and balances diverse "goods," I argue that QBA practitioners' care for the data must balance competing priorities and values. I take particular interest in what makes a "good" assessor as they transform between subject and object. When two observers are found to be outliers, with their divergent judgments marring the successful statistical validation of the QBA mouse tool, the situated nature of knowledge is brought to the fore. I argue that turning to the embodied practice of attention, as distinct from care, helps us understand why, and raises questions about the epistemic culture of conventional animal welfare science and the extent to which the human observer risks reification within QBA's formal methodological practice

Outlier · Political science · Qualitative research · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Welfare · Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies · Animal testing and alternatives · Applied Psychology · Computer Science · Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence