Adam Levy: 00:03
Hello, I’m Adam Levy and this is Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. In this episode: bullying in science.
Throughout this series we’ve looked at the threats to scientists and to science itself, threats to freedom and safety that can end careers and block avenues of research.
As we’ve discussed, many such threats come from outside of science. External factors like war, an economic situation, or political interference. But today, in our seventh episode of the series, we’re taking a look at a problem that comes from within the research world, a problem whose severity can derail lives, and yet can be found in labs the world over.
Today we’re talking about bullying and harassment in academic research.
Harassment and bullying can take many forms, and no two experiences are the same. Earlier in this series, we spoke about the impact that online harassment can have on researchers. And in that episode we spoke with Chris Jackson, a geoscientist at the engineering company Jacobs, in the UK.
Chris also shared his thoughts on why, despite evidence of widespread harassment in the sciences, there’s so little awareness of the problem.
Chris Jackson: 01:35
There seems to be this amazing bus between how common it is and the awareness of it. And I think that, in itself, explains why, that it’s so common bullying and harassment, is because I think some people are just ignorant to it.
Either they don’t know what bullying harassment means or by them not being subjected to it, they can't almost imagine it happens to other people.
And I really think, you know, whether it’s bullying, harassment, such as racial discrimination, or its anti-queer sentiments and discrimination, I think a lot of these things arise because people are unable to put themselves in somebody else’s position and identify with the axes of that other person’s personality, which might mean that discrimination is more likely to occur to them than it is to them themselves.
So I do think just that awareness, and continually talking about things, and then showing a bunch of data which kind of explain numerically what the problem is and how it affects people, it’s really, really important, because sometimes it’s just ignorance, and sometimes it’s just, you know, an unwillingness to believe that happens. But we need to keep on banging the drum about these things.
Adam Levy: 02:46
It can seem like a lot of institutions are taking more and more measures to actually fight bullying and harassment. Do you think this is actually taking place in institutions you’ve been aware of? Or is it more about paying lip service to the idea of taking action?
Chris Jackson: 03:03
I think there’s some good people trying to do some good things, is probably the first bit of my answer, I think.
The second bit of my answer is there’s some people who want to be seen to be doing the right thing and doing good things, and they want to be seen to be good.
I can honestly say 20 years into my academic career, although I’m not you know, I’ve kind of recently moved away from the centre of it, these things are being talked about more.
We are, we are talking more about bullying and harassment. You know, there are podcast series and op-eds about about the importance of this, and we’re trying to recognize the importance of good academic conduct and positive academic environments as an integral part of the academic process.
And that wasn’t happening 20 years ago. I think we have moved positively in that sense, which I think is good. Now we still need to have the tenacity and the processes and the, you know - whether they’re disciplinary or supporting victims of abuse - we need to have resources, financial and otherwise, being put into those things to make sure that we’re not just talking about these things more, we are actually seeing people having a better experience within academia or within science more generally, as a function of these things we’re trying to implement.
And that’s all that matters really. It doesn’t matter if you talk about things. All that matters is that people have a better time of it. That’s where we want to get to. How we get there is kind of secondary in a way.
Adam Levy: 04:27
Chris Jackson there. Some researchers have made it their mission to find a way to make the situation better, and to uncover why so many individuals and institutions resist the changes needed to stamp out bullying and harassment in science.
For example, nanomedicine and regenerative medicine researcher Morteza Mahmoudi, who’s at Michigan State University. Besides his official academic research, Morteza is also the co-founder and director of the Academic Parity movement.
Since 2019 the organization has aimed to provide external resources for targets of academic bullying.
We began our conversation discussing what inspired Morteza to found the movement.
Morteza Mahmoudi: 05:15
When I basically got my PhD back in 2009, I had to basically get training in different aspects of science, like in medicine.
So I started visiting different labs and get additional training. So no matter where I basically work, I always basically saw people suffering from the issues of academic bullying and harassment.
So I wrote a short piece to Nature about the issues of the reporting system in the field of academic bullying and harassment.
And it was interesting that between two weeks after publication of these pieces, the number of feedback that I’ve got was like hugely higher than all of the feedbacks that I’ve got for over 200 papers that I had in the field of nanomedicine and regenerative medicine.
So I thought with myself that, okay, our role as a scientist is to make the world a better place to live. So what is better than studying academic bullying? It seems that it’s a real problem, but yet no one talks about it. So I basically, I started studying academic bullying seriously, from that time.
Adam Levy: 06:37
Now, when we talk about bullying, and specifically academic bullying, how do we define those terms?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 06:45
In general terms academic bullying is a violation of human rights in an academic setting.
But it has a wide range of actions. It starts from, like, verbal abuse, all the way to stealing intellectual properties, or authorship credit. Advanced version, I would say, it’s a false allegation of academic misconduct in an attempt to basically remove star scientists from competition.
Adam Levy: 07:19
What are the effects on academics who are being bullied, both in terms of their careers, but also in terms of the actual wellbeing?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 07:30
It has huge effects. It starts from mental health issues in short term, like anxiety or stress.
But in long term, it can also develop serious cardiovascular issues, PTSD, and other mental and even physical health issues.
I always encourage people to also consider the fact that this is not a problem that only affect targets. It also affect like other people. For example, if a target is in like a medical setting or in healthcare, academic bullying, or other types of bullying and harassment, can increase wrong decision-making in medical procedures. So it even affects patients.
Adam Levy: 08:20
Given all these incredibly negative effects on the person on the receiving end, as well as the wider discipline, why does this kind of behaviour happen in the first place?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 08:32
So there are many reasons for that. I mean, the bullying happens actually, when we have power differences. And unfortunately, in academia, they have a unique power difference structures.
If you look at the universities, when an international student basically comes to a lab, many of the major decisions about the careers and also their residency in the lab, gets limited to one person, which is a PI.
So people at higher level of power feel less accountable about their actions and behaviours. If, like a bullying cases get kind of escalated at the lab level, and the target basically complains to department chair or other authorities at the universities, the outcomes that at least we see from scandals that comes to the news are very disappointing, and encourage basically perpetrators to do what they do. And also encourage targets to use the code of silence.
For example, in many cases of academic bullying that comes to the news, specifically like a couple of cases that basically they witnessed last year, the situation is that the perpetrator does bullying behaviour for even a couple of decades.
There were like hundreds of targets, who a portion of them complained to the university and nothing happened. Basically perpetrators got protected for a variety of reasons. For example, one reason is that their interest is intertwined with university’s interest. They bring huge amount of money and funding to the university. Universities gets overhead. So they basically sweep the case under the carpet,
It sends a clear signal to perpetrators that they are protected. They can do whatever they want to do, and another negative signals to target that it's better to use the code of silence
Adam Levy: 10:47
Given all of that. it might seem almost a bit helpless to someone who does find themselves on the receiving end of bullying. What actions can someone actually take if they are in this situation, being bullied by someone in the academic workplace, especially when that might be a superior, someone with power over them?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 11:08
So the first thing is that they should detect and identify academic bullying at the first place. The second part is to document everything. Academic bullies are clever. They barely leave trace of their actions.
So every single chance that basically a target can get to document, they need to document that. If someone is witness, they basically need to also collect their names, their ideas. The third important thing is collective actions.
So it would be great that they basically find allies and look for others that are in the, in the same situation. So this helps a lot.
The other thing is to inform themselves, or basically educate themselves, about the internal and external resources that are available to them to get help.
For example, one of the trusted resources is ombudsofficers, getting consultation from legal bodies, for example. They can consult with a lawyer about the situation.
Be aware of retaliation of any kind, which is unfortunately very common in the case of, like, academic bullying. Try to see what happened to other people at the same cases, and have Plan B in mind.
Adam Levy: 12:38
Now, how is all of this limited when there are serious risks to the career of the academic when they would speak out? For example, I’m speaking about maybe foreign students whose visa depends on them continuing their degree with their supervisor.
Morteza Mahmoudi: 12:56
Yeah, that’s unfortunately the sad reality.
The outcomes of our global survey, which we have done in 2019, and we received over 2000 responses to that, reveal that one of the main reasons that targets try to use code of silence instead of speaking up, is the fear of retaliation.
The examples like I mentioned, that came to the news shows that when a person basically complain, they receive serious direct or indirect mobbing which is basically ganging up against targets.
But at the same time, the recent awareness about the issue of academic polling basically forced other stakeholders to come in and take some actions.
For example, funding agencies now have a direct line for targets to basically report any abuse they receive, if the PIs are funded by that particular agency. One thing I always emphasize for international students is to be proactive about the lab that they want to do the research.
So if they try to reach out to the former lab members, they can get useful feedback.
So by being proactive, they can actually evaluate the lab health prior to joining a lab.
Adam Levy: 14:30
That note of doing research before moving a lab is actually something we touched on in a previous series of this podcast when we were discussing moving labs.
But a lot of what we’ve been talking about just now has been about what the victim of bullying can do if they find themselves in that situation.
What about third parties, people who perhaps witnessed this kind of behaviour taking place?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 14:55
Yeah, so first of all, I would like to change the word of victim to target.
It’s important because victim has kind of a negative feeling to the, to the basically target. Anyway, a witness can basically do a lot of things.
They can interfere with the situation to basically change the direction of the discussion. They can report what they witness, at least to the trusted internal resources, like to the ombudsperson. They can basically back up the claims of the targets, if they decide to speak up. There’s a kind of risk. But if they take the risk and want to report they can have a great effect.
Adam Levy: 15:44
As you’ve shared, a big part of why bullying and harassment are so commonplace is because there are all these structures in place which which effectively protect the bullier. What should institutions change in how they handle these kinds of cases?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 16:01
So institutions and universities by its own basically, have limited intention to fairly consider the cases of academic bullying and harassment. What we are basically advocating for is making a platform that all of the involved, the stakeholders, can be responsible and response able for those cases.
For example, if funding agencies gets involved in the cases, and they basically ban universities that have higher rate of bullying cases from funding they provide, then universities are forced to take more fair actions about, like those issues.
The other thing is to better understand the long-term effects of academic bullying and harassment on institutions and also on science.
The long-term side effect is far beyond the target. It causes many talented scientists to leave academia. It can cause data fabrication, because in many cases that the basically witness and reach to the reports, bowling was the initial force, to targets to fabricate data. And the other important stakeholders that needs to be involved, I think, are taxpayers.
All of the costs of the perpetrators are being covered by the university’s lawyer, which are basically taxpayers’ money and funding.
The other thing I think is very important that needs to be carefully considered in the field of academic bullying and harassment, is the accountability of the investigation, internal investigation committees, who basically made those decisions and what responsibilities they have over the decisions.
Adam Levy: 18:07
What does it mean to you purely on a personal level, to be able to carry out this work to try and address academic bullying and harassment?
Morteza Mahmoudi: 18:17
As a scientist and as a building block of the scientific community, we want to basically do something that matters. If the universities can’t handle the bullying and harassment, because it’s very unfortunate, but again, it’s a reality, that if targets of academic bullying and harassment remains unhealed, there’s a great risk that they would be a future bullies when they basically get to the power position.
So honestly, I get paid, like, for my works in nanomedicine, and regenerative medicine. But I value the work I do volunteering on, like, academic bullying and harassment, because I see in real time that it helps targets of academic bullying, and it may help the field to kind of move forward in creating a platform that finally all of their stakeholders and decision-makers and gatekeepers basically, can feel responsible and response able to finally put an end on this age-old issue.
Adam Levy: 19:32
Morteza Mahmoudi there. We mentioned in previous episodes that this series would be in seven parts, and this is indeed the seventh episode.
But in producing the series, in particular this episode, we’ve realized there’s just too much to say to fit it all in.
And so we'll be returning to the topic of harassment and misconduct in science in an episode coming soon, where we'll look specifically at the devastation that sexual harassment and assault can have on researchers, and on research.
That episode should be out in a couple of weeks. So make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it. Until then, thanks for listening. I’m Adam Levy.
