 Every day, numerous advancements in medicine help heal and improve the quality of life of people throughout the world. Many of these advancements are made thanks to research done with laboratory animals. But at the current pace at which science moves forward, researchers may find themselves under enormous pressure to publish their results, placing both the quality of their research and the well-being of their animal subjects at risk. So how can researchers keep up with the speed of science? How can they make sure laboratory animals are properly handled? How can they get the most out of their experiments? The keynote speakers at the Virtual Conference on Laboratory Animal Science, hosted by Lab Roots, may hold some answers. Faced with the ever-increasing pressure to publish results, the risk of bias is a pervasive problem among institutions, journals, and various fields of study. Dr. Malcolm McLeod describes how scientists can combat this risk in planning, analyzing, and reporting in vivo research by doubling efforts to properly report study designs, and he proposes strategies for improving the quality of animal research in general. Similarly, Dr. Katie Lidster discusses measures instituted by the National Center for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research to improve the design and reporting of animal studies. These include the ARRIVE guidelines, a kind of scientist checklist aimed to maximize information published while minimizing unnecessary studies. The guidelines are endorsed by over 600 journals, major research funders, universities, and societies in an effort to ensure that animal studies are robust, transparent, and reproducible. While the actions promoted by Dr. McLeod and Lidster could certainly help scientists monitor some of the more pronounced sources of bias that may affect animal research, what of the less tangible kind that typically aren't or can't be measured? In his keynote address, Dr. Jeremy Turner discusses how vibration, noise, and ultrasonic noise, the kind produced by lab equipment, fluorescent lighting, and electronics found in most animal facilities act as insidious sources of stress in biomedical research. In addition to explaining how these stressors affect animal studies, Dr. Turner provides practical steps on how to minimize them. And expanding on the issue of limited measurability, the final keynote speaker, Dr. Hugh Gallage, examines one of the most challenging questions faced in conducting animal studies. Are euthanasia methods for lab animals actually humane? Dr. Gallage weighs what the most recent scientific evidence says about the humanness of various killing techniques and makes the case that the negative impacts of commonly used methods should be considered during the early stages of planning studies before the decision to use animals is made. As the foundation for the numerous discussions held at the Lab Animal Sciences Conference, these four keynotes provide a critical overview of animal research today and a forward-looking glimpse of what it could one day become.