> All the researchers I've known have cared deeply about the welfare of the animals, despite sometimes doing terrible things to them for science.

As far as I know it’s one of the few fields with authorities that can block animal cruelty on ethical grounds through ethical review boards (mandatory Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees in the case of federally funded research).

Researchers must submit detailed protocols describing exactly what they plan to do, how many animals they’ll use, what procedures will be performed, how pain and distress will be managed, and why alternatives like cell cultures won’t work. There’s a whole framework called the 3Rs: replace animals where possible, reduce the number used, and refine procedures to minimize suffering.

Science is the wrong tree to go barking up, especially given the impact of the research overall, compared to clothing or food or other animals products.

I can mostly agree. I have encountered a diagnosed sociopath in the sciences, and the systems within Science often seemed engineered entirely to provide justifications to the non-science folks with the bank details, so it has the normal human failings. But most of the people involved could have made more money in industry, and were there because they cared about the subject matter. Even the sociopath to the extent that word means anything in their context.

Ethics rubrics for animal studies and institutional review boards for same are definitely an area academia is doing better than most other human endeavors. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. More to emphasize the intense moral introspection each of the researchers I've known who have done animal studies have had to do about it.