Study of Monkeys ‘Predicting’ Election Winners Shows Science Is Off the Rails

For Immediate Release:
September 24, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding a recent experiment conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in which experimenter Michael Platt strapped monkeys into restraint chairs and deprived them of water to see whether they could “predict” the results of the U.S. presidential election. This follows his earlier experiment at Duke University in which he tormented monkeys supposedly to study depictions of sex and power in ads by Nike, Pizza Hut, and other brands.

PETA will bring criminal or civil action if there is any way to do so, as the University of Pennsylvania has allowed experimenter Michael Platt to cause grievous suffering to monkeys in a “joke” experiment to “determine” whether they can look at photos and predict the winners of elections. He denied the scared primates liquid, so they’d cooperate for a tiny sip of juice, strapped them down into a restraint chair for hours, and forced them to stare at images of faces that mean nothing to them. It’s a sign of how removed from actual science experimentation has become when a scientific journal might publish this cruel nonsense and deeply disturbing that scientists and journalists are discussing it like it has some meaning. The research community should be mortified by Platt’s experiments and bar him from using animals. PETA will be seeking legal advice.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.