In an interview with the BBC yesterday 2014 Nobel laureate John O Keefe has warned of the dangers posed by regulations that restrict animal research and the free movement of scientists across borders.

“It is an incontrovertible fact that if we want to make progress in basic areas of medicine and biology we are going to have to use animals. “There is a worry that the whole regulatory system might begin to be too difficult, it might be constrictive.”

His concerns are well founded. Our post yesterday discussed the key role of recordings of single neuron activity in rats to the discoveries made by John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser. The post also discusses two other advances made through basic research in animals whose impact in medicine has been recognized by awards, deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease, and infant massage in preterm babies. Nevertheless in many countries around the world there is increasing pressure from animal rights groups on politicians to restrict, and even ban, animal research. Scientists have a key role to play in ensuring that important basic and translational research, and we welcome John O’Keefe’s statement, it’s an example that scientists around the world should follow.

The issue of immigration is another important one for science, and John O’Keefe knows this better than most. Born in New York, he completed his PhD at the University on Montreal under the supervision of renowned Psychologist Ronald Melzack, before moving to the UK to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship, and credits the research environment in the UK and at UCL for giving him the opportunity to make his discoveries, and later May-Britt and Edvard Moser spent time as postdoctoral researchers at his laboratory. For science to flourish scientists must be free to travel to centres of excellence in other countries, to learn skills and establish collaborations that are key to success in many fields of research in the 21st century. This freedom is under threat from narrow-minded isolationism in many countries, for example earlier this year Switzerland found its position as a leading scientific nation undermined by a new immigration law that threatens its ability to recruit talented scientists from abroad, and has disrupted its participation in a key EU research programmes.

John O’Keefe’s warning is a reminder that the threats to scientific research can come from many directions, and of the need for supporters of science to be ready to take action to defend the freedoms on which science is built.

Speaking of Research