This is an article about bullying and abuse by professors and managers of academic labs. It's a huge problem, because early-career researchers depend heavily on approval and references from PIs, and there's a strong element of path-dependence in many academic career situations: you often can't easily just quit and join a different lab. You're captive to the abuse.
As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I'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're going to face in their fields).
I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like "my friend's PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend's appendix had just burst; the PI said 'I don't care about your appendix'". 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 successfully kicked out a professor from academia who was a bully and was harassing many other people. But this costed me several years of my career and was extremely tough to do. Ironically, I eventually ended up in a worse place. Some things I have learned in the process:
* Bullying is much more common in experimental fields. From what I've seen, bullies are enriched in the population of >50 years old professor (male or female) who attracts tons of funding and publishes several articles per month. Publishing so often is, in general, a red flag.
* When joining a group, try to talk to graduate students and postdocs. People stopped joining our group because they knew it was led by a bully. In general, most students will be extremely honest about bad working conditions.
* Before joining, try to test drive the group in some way. For example, with a small rotation project. Usually, being an insider even during a short period will reveal all nasty stuff. We had many rotation project students and none of them stayed.
* A good heuristic is to join small groups where the leader, young or old, has skin in the game. Usually, younger PIs in small groups have more skin in the game and they tend to be nicer.
* Another good heuristic is to join groups where people regularly progress to other positions in academia.
> I'm interested if people have any horror stories of their own to share about abusive PIs
Things I have experienced first hand, either myself or graduate students:
* A male PI that hires attractive graduate students and gives them easy tasks to land Nature, Science or Cell co-authorships and at the same time tries to land sexual favors from them.
* A female PI that only hires female graduate students and is incredibly aggressive towards male students from other groups, trying to undermine their research.
* A junior faculty member who progressively asked some students to do more and more unreasonable tasks in a particular project so that they eventually refused. Got them removed them from the project clearly in order to get a better position for himself in the publication and to include some of his friends. All this close to submission.
* A group of junior faculty members who plotted to change first authors days before submission, without communicating with the downgraded authors. Needless to say, they upgraded themselves to first authors, without having contributed anything.
* Written threats to misrepresent research results.
When I was a PhD student, my papers almost always had author order alphabetical. I later learned that other fields cared about "first author". At first, I couldn't believe it - it's so obviously ripe for abuse. But I found out it's true - and abused.
I'm in a more senor position now and I still prefer alphabetic order. Having more power than coauthors has somewhat softened my stance though, as my preferences shouldn't be forced upon underlings.
But it is still baffling that anyone (let alone scientists) puts any stock in author order.
You say it in jest, but I know a group whose head's surname started with a B and she was a staunch defender of alphabetical order... until someone joined who started with an A.
I'm currently supervising 2 PhD students whose last name is alphabetically later than mine. I explained my reasons for my preference to them; that's how far I'll go.
With one, we've had multiple collaborations outside the institution. In those cases, alphabetical order was typically arrived upon with all authors. In other cases it depends - we've had quite equal contribution papers which ended up alphabetically. We're now working on one that he conceived and executed. I'm basically the co-writing sparring partner, where I strongly prefer him to be first author.
The other student feels it's important for his career to be first author, so he is. I certainly hope he's wrong (for my career so far it didn't matter), but I'm not taking that chance.
I'm 2nd author on a 2-author paper where my only contribution was answering a couple of questions on how to use some software, and then proofreading the couple of paragraphs that mentioned it. I didn't even read most of the paper, let alone know what it was really about. Surely there's a need to communicate the fact that my contribution is less than that of the real author?
No doubt. Or not even have such minor contributors as authors in the first place. Perhaps you should have to have actually written part of the paper, like an actual author, or at least done some novel research of your own. Technicians and others who assisted with it, even did all of the grunt work could just be acknowledged if they want some fame. But I guess that authorship is a kind of payment-by-exposure instead of actual money and enough people are desperate enough to take it.
Could you elaborate on your gripe with order, or how that would be abused?
In my field, 1st author did most of the work, typically the responsible grad student, then authors 2 to n-1 supporting characters, maybe contributed some data, some script, wrote a paragraph. Last author is PI.
Sometimes you’ll have a 2nd author who ended up contributing like the 1st as the paper progresses, that’s really the only ambiguous situation, but you can switch that around for a conference or follow-up.
I've heard of two instances in my social circle of PIs turning on students for no good reason and divebombing their academic / research careers intentionally through the reference recommendation system you mentioned. (One ended up in software engineering, which they incidentally picked up while studying their other field).
- It is a pretty scary situation to have someone above you with absolute power over your entire career track which you may be a decade in to pursuing.
- It's extra scary that the system's incentive structure of can create feedback loops that reward abusive behavior and grow its prevalence. PIs have a certain realm of absolute power -> they can choose to use it to irresponsibly ride others to increase that realm. And there's little downside and possible recourse for the abused. Higher ups see: More awards! More publications! (Wait, where'd those students go...)
That said there are lots of good PIs out there doing awesome stuff and treating their teams well. Definitely worth finding ways to get the real scoop on the PI. Former lab members, for example, or anyone outside of the "just don't upset the leader" incentive structure.
Makes you appreciate how valuable it is for incentive systems to be tethered to financial reality and for the supply of job-slots to be rapidly responsive to success at creating value. Non-profits and certain pockets of politics are missing some piece of this sort of reality results tether/job-slot responsiveness as well.
A tip for people who are being harmed by the recommendation letter system: some countries don't use recommendation letters that much. For example, in Spain, many PIs don't ask for recommendation letters at all. Others (like myself) may ask, but only view it as a possible positive signal if the recommender happens to be someone I know personally. But I would never discard a candidate for a lack of recommendation letters if their CV and interview show that they're good. I have never understood why Americans trust those letters so much when they depend mostly on factors that aren't correlated with candidate quality (personal relationship between the candidate and their references, personality of the letter writer that might lead them to be more or less enthusiastic, cultural expectations, even writing skills of the letter writer, etc.)
Of course, I'm aware that changing countries is out of the question for many people, but for those who are willing, applying in places where they aren't important can be a way out.
There are definitely bullying, abusive people out there in academia (just as there are in industry too). I think the references thing you mention is one reason why so many people seem to put up with it.
But there are also very many extremely caring, dedicated people in academia, who love mentoring and building up their students and postdocs.
One major challenge, especially in STEM, is that the main way to tell the abusive apart from the supportive is through watercooler/gossip networks -- but so many young college graduates in STEM fields find gossiping distasteful, or don't see the nature of the mentor/mentee relationship as being super critical, or feel awkward asking lab members what they think when they visit, or don't feel like they have the social capital to spend asking, or just plain worry that the question itself will speak poorly of them -- and as a result they often don't find out what they're in for until they're in it and it's too late to extricate.
Committing to work for someone for 5 years is a huge deal, and you should be pretty sure you'll have a good working relationship before you start!
Gossip is pretty tough to get a read on though. What one person might read as extremely overbearing might not be a problem to another student who is very driven and less sensitive. I've seen some real awful people who shouldn't be inflicted on anyone first-hand, but I've seen some that are a bit misunderstood because they're maybe a little brusque and aren't good advisors for everyone, but can be great mentors to the right person.
Simple, more relatable example: the professor whose class gets very bimodal reviews--amazing, learn a lot, or unfair, too hard, etc.
So these things are subjective and I worry in this climate doing things reputationally isn't the right approach. I prefer subordinates be empowered to push back against PIs and switch, at least have a level of freedom more similar to a regular job market where if someone is too awful, at least they won't be able to keep students and post-docs. I don't know how to accomplish this though, it's a very hard problem.
Sure, I think everyone but the bullies would prefer your second approach. In the meantime, though, reputation is kind of all you have.
I’ll add though that if your gossip network is only giving you “overbearing/not” signal that’s petty weak tea. In my experience recent phd students of an advisor are typically happy to give an honest off-the-record take, that includes how driven you need to be, what to bring to meetings for them to be productive, etc etc. Each student will bring their own perspective and experiences, and may not be well connected to others’ (eg, a male student might not know that years ago his advisor’s last female student suffered harassment).
But ask a few of them and you’ll have a lot more data than you started with.
Also critical is to ask whoever is writing you a letter to begin with — especially if senior, they will often have useful perspective on potential advisors.
I’ve had PIs threatening me as PostDoc to void my contract and have me deported for wanting to take some vacation accrued over several years, or (different gig) for wanting to go to a job interview. And that was me as a married 30ish white male. Can’t imagine what it can be like for the 22 year young woman away from home for the first time.
It's typically very easy to find former PhD students and postdocs that have worked with a given PI. Sometimes they are even listed in the PI's website, but if they aren't, they can be found by looking for the PI's papers and checking the coauthors, or in the case of PhD students by looking for PhD theses.
Find their email address and politely contact them, asking about their experience with that PI. Most people should be happy to respond, and that kind of information is invaluable.
I don't know if the Publisher would believe as if they don't see that the ideas are the same that they have to send the proof to the people I am complaining about. I don't know if the court will believe, as they are not domain specialists and will judge by the letter of the law.
Not exactly a horror story, but here it one. I decided to send proofs to a well-known academic publisher in order to report colleagues who had used findings from my lesser-known research papers (published in lower-profile journals) and my PhD thesis as their key conclusions. The Publisher started an investigation, but I was told that my colleagues would need to see the evidence first. The Publisher would not disclose my identity, I was certain that my "colleagues" would have figured it out. So, I made the decision to call them first and ask for clarification. They requested me to send them their text and works for which I was claiming authorship while acting as though they had no idea what I was talking about. After I sent the email, they called back, berated me, and threatened me with a lawsuit for defamation for using the words "Below is the text from the paper, which contains ideas taken from my publications.". They explicitly used the words "by all possible means". Then asked for apology. I did apologize and urge the Publisher to halt the investigation, but was this the proper course of action? Back then I was scared, but I am angry now. My sin is that my papers and Ph.D. results are not published in the big academic publishing companies (so they cannot find the plagiarism), except for one in Elsevier.
I know many students (grad-sometimes undergrads) that had there name taken off publications last minute just for submission. And, this is at one of the most liberal wel know universities in Canada. No action possible.
Also, I know many students that performed work for 2-4 years, and the supervisor kept saying it's not good enough. Red flag is when your program is 3 year PhD, or 1 year master, but most people leave around 6-7 years, and 2-4 years respectively. Where is that problem? Ask the average time people take to do their PhD's. If they can't get you finished, while you enter with straight A's top 10% of your class. What is going on here?
For what it worth — this is mentioned in the article but not emphasized — it doesn't end with student status. Bullying targets everyone up the academic career trajectory. Students are especially vulnerable I think but it can happen to anyone.
I'm glad you've had a positive experience: everyone deserves a respectful work environment, both because it's the Right Thing to do and because it improves productivity.
That said, you're countering a researched article, and the experiences of the vast majority of people in this thread, with...your anecdatum.
Does it seem that absurd to suggest that, wherever you put an abusive person in a position of power with much at stake, abuse happens regardless of setting?
I for one couldn't tell whether the poster you're responding to is writing sarcastically or not. ("Most people are vegan" really?)
That said...
> That said, you're countering a researched article, and the experiences of the vast majority of people in this thread, with...your anecdatum.
The article claims the following:
> For example, a recent large survey-based Swedish study (with 38 918 participants) on academic bullying revealed that 1 in 15 people have experienced academic bullying over the past years
I'd be shocked if the number of workers experiencing workplace bullying in industry is much less than "1 in 15"...
As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I'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're going to face in their fields).
I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like "my friend's PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend's appendix had just burst; the PI said 'I don't care about your appendix'". 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.