Breaking the silence around academic bullying

This is an article about bullying and abuse by professors and managers of academic labs. It&#x27;s a huge problem, because early-career researchers depend heavily on approval and references from PIs, and there&#x27;s a strong element of path-dependence in many academic career situations: you often can&#x27;t easily just quit and join a different lab. You&#x27;re captive to the abuse.<p>As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I&#x27;m interested if people have any horror stories of their own to share about abusive PIs (just because I worry about my own kids and what they&#x27;re going to face in their fields).<p>I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like &quot;my friend&#x27;s PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend&#x27;s appendix had just burst; the PI said &#x27;I don&#x27;t care about your appendix&#x27;&quot;. Or the lab where the researchers had brought in special furniture to create a private area to cry in after the PI had finished berating them. Or the abusive lab with an anomalously high number of suicides.

I had a very difficult PhD advisor. They were a bit of a celebrity in the field and it showed in their attention to image and presentation, both of themselves and the work: speaking in inspirational profundities while actually expecting the opposite, obsessing more with the optics of the lab and work than the work itself, pushing for PR that distracted from actual research, etc. They were constantly belittling and dismissive to most updates while being unable to advise in a meaningful technical capacity, which fostered a stale air of depression around the lab.<p>I was once threatened to get kicked out of the lab due to missing an internal deadline for a paper draft, several weeks out from the official deadline (which is very strict by comparison; most other PIs were fine with students starting to write a week - or even just a few days - before the deadline). We were already working against our late decision to aim for a submission, and a whirlwind of academic and personal events made this a very stressful period that they were unsympathetic to. That paper ended up being the only accept out of the whole department.<p>I eventually &#x2F;did&#x2F; get kicked out, after venting years of pent-up grievances during a mental breakdown for which I was seeking treatment. I can&#x27;t tell which part of that episode upsets me more: finding out through a notification of my fork of my project repo being deleted, or that they did this despite - or maybe because of - knowing that I had scheduled counseling appointments. That they could do this without any warning or mediation - per university policy - hammered home the point that under the subterfuge of caring and inclusivity, academia still treats students like replaceable cogs in a paper mill.<p>I limped and hobbled my way to graduation and have since been much^3 happier in industry. From what I&#x27;ve heard of the department, it sounds like nothing has changed and controversies - some particularly heinous - continue to get swept under the rug. Academia is in need of a wholesale reset to flush out the toxic mentalities that breeds these bullies in the first place.

In the late 90s I was a student representative on a University committee tasked with putting together a policy on hazing after some incidents with sports teams.<p>We had great difficulty putting together a definition which didn&#x27;t also describe large parts of the academic system, including tenure.

This is just what humans do in status hierarchies where the aim is to achieve more status. The military, the priesthood and imperial concubines will be just as bad. They tend to be monolithic structures, so you can’t just defect to another hierarchy. The solution is to create more varied ways to do research outside the academy.

there are so so many lovely kind mentors out there who really do want the best for you. however, my advice for anyone looking at a new lab:<p>1. ask every junior person if they have any interpersonal issues or if they have heard of any issues<p>2. ask them what their day to day looks like - micromanaging from the PI, competition within the lab, supply issues, etc are all red flags. hear people when they say something small that you could overlook (e.g. &quot;oh yeah we are expected to work 80 hours a week but its fine!&quot;, &quot;my PI can be a little intense but its fine!&quot;) -- this usually points to deeper issues.<p>3. directly ask about any harassment problems to the lab managers and junior people if you feel comfortable. its very easy for harassers to hide in these big institutions and you don&#x27;t want to be stuck with one.<p>4. ask your current PI - oftentimes there will be gossip networks and your PI will be aware of issues and can steer you away from bad actors.

Does the abuse take the form of behaviors besides harassment found in other workplace environments, or is the behavior specific to the academic setting? I expected the later but the article seems to describe the former. Is this <i>academic</i> bullying or is it more like “workplace harassment in academia”?

I feel like this is great, and all of us have horror stories of very abrasive people in Academia. That said, it&#x27;s a shame they won&#x27;t talk about the structure of Academia itself which eventually ends up in this situation where terrible people have power. Wagging fingers won&#x27;t solve the underlying issue here and as long as there is no serious reckoning with the general culture of taking advantage of the desperate, terrible people will always find themselves in positions of power here.

I seriously hope something happens on this issue. Virtually every young academic I know tells me this is everywhere and the most toxic people are usually who move up the promotion ladder, by stepping on and forcing the decent ones out. Actual talent seems to be secondary to skill at removing rivals and piggybacking on others.

I just got approved in a MSc program and I&#x27;m already getting upset with the group I joined, they think they&#x27;all sooo important. I have an industry job as well and if it gets worse I&#x27;ll just tell &#x27;em to fuckoff.

Never ever join a grad school programme unless you are an Olympiad medalist working under a Nobel laureate. 95 out 100 return to industry with huge lack of relevant skills and a large opportunity cost.

I read the pattern and what is being described, is not exclusive to academia. It is a typical workplace.<p>A few lost jobs and horrible bosses later I can summarize the experience as follows:<p>1. Bullying is legal. Unless it’s provable that it is based on one of the protected classes.<p>2. Because it is legal, companies side with the aggressor to deny everything and absolve themselves from liabilities.<p>3. Bystanders rarely help you. They may show solidarity, but will not step in on official channels.<p>4. Lawyers are expensive and it’s very hard to pursue any claims.<p>5. Documentation is very hard because modern workforce is trained on how to not get sued (unless someone is really stupid)<p>6. Some laws like “two party consent” for recording that is meant to protect privacy, has the unintended consequences of enabling abuse.<p>TLDR; harassment is legal and okay. Workers have limited protections.

I s&#x2F;harassment&#x2F;bullying&#x2F;&#x27;d the title above, in the hope of making the article&#x27;s scope clearer.<p>The word &#x27;harassment&#x27; tends to snap to the grid of culture war categories, which led to some offtopic flamewars. Hopefully we can avoid those in Take 2 of this thread.

Tangential anecdote. I like to think about physics a lot and I regularly write things down.<p>One time, I was so excited about the concepts I had been playing with, that I decided to go talk to a Stanford physics professor (who I had never met).<p>I just went to campus, started walking around the physics buildings and ran into him. He was gracious enough to let me walk with him for about 10-15 minutes while we talked. At the end he said my stuff was interesting, but it would take a lot of time to develop, that he was too old to help me and that instead I should talk to a younger professor at Caltech (he gave me his name).<p>I thanked him for his time and help, then looked up the professor he mentioned, saw a phone listed for his office and called. The Caltech professor picked up the phone, I explained the situation to him and then he told me I had been pranked.<p>He said that it was a running joke between them to “send” the clueless&#x2F;crazies to each other.<p>Needless to say I felt like crap. At the same time it made me realize how unnecessarily cruel some people can be.<p>These were super recognized professors in their fields, one of them a Nobel prize winner. Both probably incredibly busy&#x2F;demanded people. Yet, they go out of their way to make others feel shitty.<p>I wonder how they treat their students.

Honestly I&#x27;m put off by the authors&#x27; use of critical theory and intersectionality. But the fact that this harassment does exist and should be eradicated is unquestionable, and any effort to raise awareness and fight it should be commended.