The scientists looked more than a little uncomfortable as they stood in a ring of strangers and came up with adjectives to describe their feelings. This isn't how an ordinary day in the lab starts.

Last Wednesday, a peculiar assortment of people met in London to hammer out an issue many British universities are afraid to talk about - animal research.

As the workshop began, scientists found themselves standing alongside playwrights, campaigners from both sides of the animal experimentation debate and 15-year-old schoolchildren.

The children were "intrigued" and "interested", but others were "anxious" - and that was before they had to move around the room holding hands with people they'd never met and asking them about their pets.

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The point of the workshop, which was funded by the Association of Medical Research Charities, was to brainstorm ideas that the playwrights - members of the YMCA's theatre company Y-Touring - can turn into a stage performance that will make people really think. The play will tour schools and should eventually reach the Edinburgh Festival.

Nigel Townsend, Y-Touring's artistic director, told the room - "There is a climate of fear surrounding animal research. But we believe a healthy democratic society is one where people can make their own minds up."

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The debate began in earnest. The playwrights and teenagers sat in rows as speaker after speaker took to the stage. It was like animal-research ping-pong, with statistics and emotional arguments volleyed back and forth.

Some speakers wouldn't stop when their time was up.

A former scientist who gives talks in schools on the need for animal research announced he was going to show a video of cats in a university animal house. The teenagers sat forward eagerly in their seats. One playwright started to panic: "I don't want to see this."

In fact, the cats were rolling about happily in their cage. The playwright looked close to tears.

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Both sides claimed to have science behind them. One speaker reeled off a list of people with PhDs who believe animal experiments tell us nothing.

Others, including a young scientist in trendy low-slung trousers the teenagers might have worn, said scientists were in no doubt that animal research was necessary - nasty, maybe, but necessary.

As the morning wore on, one schoolchild admitted: "We're blinded by science. Who do we believe?" A playwright, heading out of the door in search of coffee, agreed: "My head hurts."

Information overload it might have been - but at least this unusual group of people were talking.

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