Question: What are you most looking forward to this year in your career

Robert Ives answered on 19 Sep 2019:

I have a research paper (like a long piece of homework) that will hopefully be published this year that shows how keeping rats in large housing with lots of toys (called ‘environmental enrichment) and space to behave more naturally (bit like a rat playground) improves the way rats learn new things and accept changes which improve the quality of scientific results. This sounds obvious but has been really hard to prove and I hope that my paper will help to improve the living conditions that laboratory rats are kept in. Poor animal welfare = poor science, good animal welfare = good science, great animal welfare = great science.