Lawsuit, Billboards Call Out Macalester College Over Animal Abuse in Outdated Psych Lab

ST. PAUL, Minn.—In a lawsuit filed June 3, 2025, in Hennepin County District Court, Macalester College is accused of violating consumer fraud laws by advertising itself as a model of compliance with ethical animal research guidelines while killing small animals in outdated psychology courses, despite the availability of sophisticated nonanimal alternatives. 

The lawsuit was brought by Macalester alumnus Neal Barnard, MD, who, while preparing to celebrate his 50th college reunion, discovered that Macalester continues to kill large numbers of animals every year in mechanical devices designed more than 100 years ago. Stanford, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other schools have stopped using animals for these purposes.

Macalester psychology courses use small metal “Skinner boxes,” invented by psychologist B.F. Skinner in the 1920s, to force the animals deprived of food or water for long periods to perform a variety of acts to get the food or water they need to survive. Afterwards, the animals are killed.

“As a psychology major in 1972, I participated in those old-fashioned exercises,” says Dr. Barnard, a 1975 Macalester magna cum laude graduate. “At the end of each laboratory series, the animals were tossed into a trash can, chloroform was poured over them, and the lid was closed.”

Since the invention of the Skinner box a century ago, means of investigating behavior and brain function have evolved dramatically, and teaching methods, including computer models and hands-on classroom exercises with human participants, have largely replaced animal use in psychology education.

After graduating from Macalester, Dr. Barnard formed the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which has reformed animal research elsewhere, eliminating the use of dogs and other animals in medical school courses and helping to replace the use of chimpanzees in federally funded research. His offers to work with Macalester to modernize its psychology teaching methods were refused.

Macalester’s psychology department has confirmed that it continues to use and kill animals in old-fashioned animal laboratories as part of the introductory psychology course and other courses, despite the college stating on its website that it adheres to ethical guidelines that call for the replacement, reduction, and refinement of animal use in research: “Animal welfare standards and ethical principles are applied at the highest possible level in any animal use or research conducted at or in association with the college.” 

Dr. Barnard says, “The college advertising that it adheres to ethical guidelines at the highest level is simply a fraud.”

The lawsuit seeks, among other actions, an order compelling Macalester “to cease its use of animal laboratories in psychology instruction and in all other areas for which nonanimal methods are available.”

In addition to the lawsuit, a billboard that reads “Macalester Psychology Education: Outdated, unethical” and features an image of a rat in a Skinner box will go up the week of June 2 at 171 N. Snelling; and one that says “Stanford, Yale, and Princeton stopped using animals in Intro Psych years ago. Mac, what are you waiting for?” and features an image of a rat will go up the week of June 9 at 80 N. Snelling.

“It is sad to see this once-great college gratuitously killing animals, with no apparent interest in modernizing,” says Dr. Barnard. “It is a disservice to students.”