EARA conference concludes with participants celebrating its success

The first-ever EARA conference #EARA2025 took place on 6 and 7 November in the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) in Berlin, a coordinated effort between EARA, the MDC and the Charité Berlin, both EARA members.  

The Conference welcomed over 200 participants from 23 countries across the EU and beyond, including the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States of America, South Africa, Mauritius and New Zealand, bringing together researchers, animal welfare officers and managers, journalists, communicators and experts on openness on animal research. 

The audience conveyed their appreciation of the organisation and the variety of panel topics and discussions, expressing delight at the overall quality of the program for the first EARA conference, with its interactive session formats and, of course, the speakers. 

The Conference started with Fiona Fox, CEO and co-founder of the Science Media Centre (SMC) in the United Kingdom, who showed that tackling the communication of controversial science is at the core of their mission. Of the period since the SMC began in 2002 and dealt with animal research controversies in the media, she said: “Openness pulled the rug from under the activists’ core accusation — secrecy.” Her talk was followed by other session speakers and a panel discussion with experts in science journalism, social media communication about animal research, and on how AI is changing the paradigm. It was one of the highlights of the first day, as it brought together different perspectives and opinions on the use of emotion to convey scientific messages. Sascha Karberg, journalist at Der Tagesspiegel, stated: “Acknowledging emotion does not replace rigour; it strengthens trust.” Also discussed was the use of unconventional platforms like TikTok and AI models such as ChatGPT to decode complex scientific topics. One of the speakers, Alba Móran-Alvárez, said: “People make health decisions from TikTok and AI — so experts have to show up there,” a point reinforced by Andy Ridgeway: “AI will not replace [scientific] reporting, but it will reshape it.” 

Lunch was followed by a series of workshops led by the EARA team on openness implementation, conveying messages through social media, and how institutional websites must include public-facing content on animal research to promote transparency. The sessions were also interspersed with three flash talks on the conference's key topics, two poster sessions, and many coffee breaks and meals designed to stimulate networking among participants, speakers, and sponsors. 

In the afternoon, a session explored various elements of animal welfare – the 3Rs, particularly the most ignored one, refinement, as well as genetically altered animals and the controversial use of non-human primates in research. It showed how diverse all of these technologies and approaches are, always with the humane use of animals in mind, but that they might be lost in translation when communicating them to the public, and that new strategies are needed to increase public trust in animal research at every step and process.  

The session was followed by the evening keynote by Lucie Côté, Director of the MUHC at McGill University in Canada, a recent story on how quickly tides can turn in research-heavy countries like Canada when a scandal, distorted by activist groups and the media, hits the scientific community. That is why the Canadian Transparency Agreement is evolving so quickly and already has so many prospective signatories. “Be ready, be open, be coordinated.” 

The next day started with another keynote from Susanna Louhimies, Policy Coordinator at the European Commission, who presented the evolution of proactive communication by EU member states, reflected on the release of annual statistics and the mandatory publication of non-technical summaries (NTS). Susanna said: “We use animals under a privilege, and our side of the bargain is openness, accountability and rigour.” Susanna also surprised the audience by launching the new NTS platform within ALURES during her talk. The new platform, designed to increase accessibility to often cryptic NTS, features filters and translations into the many native languages of the EU, partly curated by AI.  

The session on openness and transparency showed how the UK Concordat, the first Transparency Agreement in the world, led the wave of change that spread across Europe, as shown by the work of our German partner institutions. It concluded with talks on patient engagement, from both the private sector and patient associations, highlighting once again the importance of including patients in the conversation, not only on animal research but on science in general. Pepe Solves from CUH in Spain said: ‘If you explain what you do and why, people can support you — even if a cure isn’t today.’ 

In Hot Topics in Science, experts in communicating about vaccine hesitancy, genetically modified organisms, and climate change have strategies in place that could very well be applied to animal research and controversial scientific topics overall. Michael Fitzpatrick, a GP expert in vaccine hesitancy, said: ‘Dial down the megaphone; dial up the dialogue.’  

Kirk Leech, Executive Director of EARA, finished with the closing remarks and said, “EARA2025 proved that when science opens up, trust grows.” He thanked all the involved teams and participants, announced the winners for EARA 2025 Best Flash-Talk (Sebastian Löser – University of Göttingen) and Best Poster (Natascha Drude – Pro-Test Deutschland), and presented a demonstration of the new EARA website, to be released in Q1 2026. He also announced the next EARA Conference, which will take place in 2027 in Lisbon!  

We would like to reiterate our thanks to all speakers, sponsors, participants and the organising team for making this conference such a complete success, with special appreciation to MDC and Charité, for their unwavering support of this event from the beginning. Without all of you, this conference’s immense success would not have been possible. 

A full report of the EARA Conference, with transcripts of talks and much more, will be sent soon to EARA Members and other enquiring parties. In collaboration with Lab Animal, a journal from Nature Publishing Group, we will release two independent pieces: one on EARA 2025 and one on guidelines for the future of science communication.