Local lawmakers in Bremen, Germany, are refusing to renew a prominent neuroscientist's license to conduct research on primates, despite the fact that his research was approved by a national regulatory body.

The University of Bremen researcher, Andreas Kreiter, works with 24 macaques to measure neuronal firing as part of his studies into cognition in the mammalian brain. During local elections last year, the regional parliament, in response to animal rights activists' protests of Kreiter's research, called on state government to stop the work. This month, the local department that approves animal research informed Kreiter that they would not be renewing his license to conduct the research when it expires at the end of November.

"We're all very concerned about what's going on in Bremen," Stefan Treue, director of the German Primate Center in Gottingen, told Nature. "To me, this is a flagrant case of political interference with approval procedures, and with the general freedom to do science."

Kreiter told Nature that he will appeal the decision and seek an injunction in court. University officials added that they will support the researcher and take the case to the German Federal Constitutional Court, if need be.

Winrich Freiwald, another primate researcher at the University of Bremen, who studies face recognition in macaques, told The Scientist in an Email, that his work with collaborator Doris Tsao, also at Bremen, will be directly affected by this decision, as the duo's experiments are conducted under Kreiter's protocols. (Tsao will be profiled in the November issue of The Scientist.)

Both Freiwald and Tsao will soon be moving on to positions elsewhere, Freiwald noted, but the decision "concerns me as a citizen," he wrote. "What are you to think of politicians, many of whom studied the law at college, when they are knowingly violating existing law in order to gain a small political advantage? This is undercutting the very basis of our constitutional state and should concern even those opposed to animal (or primate) experiments."



Alla Katsnelson contributed reporting for this article