科技科学

PhD training should encourage ethical dissent

Nature作者：Yun Wah Lam2026年9月29日正文已收录本站
  • CORRESPONDENCE

By

  • Pandora Pound1 &
  • Anke Brüning-Richardson2
  1. Yun Wah Lam

    1. Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong.

  2. Pandora Pound

    1. Safer Medicines Trust, Kingsbridge, UK.

  3. Anke Brüning-Richardson

    1. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK.

In your Career feature, a PhD student distressed by killing two or three mice daily asks for “suggestions for coping mechanisms” (see Nature https://doi.org/rp77; 2026). The advice includes “getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising” and memorializing the euthanized animals. This is similar to telling someone who witnessed animal cruelty to practise self-care. Such support might help to protect the student’s well-being, but also risks treating an ethical conflict as a resilience problem.

Nature 658, 286 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03053-8

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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