
Sexual harassment is rife in the sciences, finds landmark US study - edwinksl
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05404-6
======
andbberger
I spent some time at an 'elite' neuroscience institution - HHMI Janelia.
They're good at window dressing but they try to 'hire the best' and prioritize
that over everything else. As a result they end up with self-obsessed PIs who
are good at publishing, not doing science - usually at the cost of all those
under them in their lab, and then give them a ridiculous amount of power. As
you can imagine, sexual harassment thrives in this environment.

It's sick, and pushed me out of 'that' academia. I don't want to be a part of
an institution that is built on empowering literally the worst, least
altruistic, most exploitative people that ever lived. These people also
necessarily suck at science.

I'm done with it, the institutions need to be torn down and rebuilt. It's all
bullshit. The process of doing science (the journals), the institutions, the
incumbents. It has all got to go.

I'm going to do science. But on my own terms.

My new purpose in life is to take the energy I would have put into science,
use it be clever and generate as much capital as possible - so I can
participate in our democracy and create the institution I want to be part of.

Join me. Quit your job, start a company. Burn it all down.

~~~
Old_Thrashbarg
In one of the neurology labs I was in at UCLA, I saw the same exact thing:
publishing tons of garbage and not doing real science. There were some
professors of higher integrity, but the PIs that were doing the garbage
publishing were getting millions of dollars.

One of my PIs, who was doing this, had a term for his publishing strategy:
"salami publishing". You try to cut as thinly as possible your research and
publish as many papers on it as you can. That's actually less harmful than the
real problem which is that the papers were just rubbish and people in the lab
seemed to all kind of know, but disliked discussing it.

~~~
nerpderp83
Do we need an anonymous but authenticated web of trust system for
analyzing/debunking papers? Is it apparent to those in the field that these
results are low quality / junk science?

How does one detect junk science paper other than being skilled enough to have
produced the bad science if the first place?

~~~
stenl
It’s definitely apparent to those in the field. All the good scientists know
who publishes junk, even if the junk publishers are unaware. Arjun Raj has a
great and relevant blog post on playing the long game in science:
[http://rajlaboratory.blogspot.com/2016/06/reproducibility-
re...](http://rajlaboratory.blogspot.com/2016/06/reproducibility-reputation-
and-playing.html?m=1). Worth a read.

------
Pfhreak
While we've gone through some amount of publicly addressing this in industries
like film, I suspect there are many industries where we're not introspective
enough to even recognize there's a problem yet.

I worked in games for a while, and I'd not be surprised to see that industry
have a #metoo moment sometime over the next few years. We're just starting to
see individuals called out in some of the more progressive studios [1], I
suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

[1][https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/yweqk5/harebrained-s...](https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/yweqk5/harebrained-
schemes-designer-accused-of-sexual-harassment-resigns)

~~~
pjc50
Game development has been pretty terrible to its staff for a long time; the
famous ea_spouse post was in 2004! [https://ea-
spouse.livejournal.com/274.html](https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html)

------
kolpa
Here's the study report (free with "Guest" login):
[https://www.nap.edu/download/24994](https://www.nap.edu/download/24994)

"Findings and Conclusions" sections are too long to summarize.

excerpt from the "Students" section:

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Overall, 20.0 percent of the students surveyed reported experiencing sexual
harassment perpetrated by a faculty or staff member.

• Female students (22.0 percent) and students who endorsed a gender other than
male or female (46.3 percent) had significantly higher incidence rates of
sexual harassment by faculty/staff, compared with male students (15.3
percent).

• Female medical and engineering students both reported significantly higher
incidence of sexual harassment by faculty/staff (medical: 47 percent,
engineering: 27 percent), compared with students enrolled in another major
(i.e., sciences, non-STEM).

• Female students who experienced sexual harassment, compared with those who
had not, generally reported worse physical and mental health outcomes, feeling
less safe on campus, and higher levels across various indicators of academic
disengagement.

* Among female STEM students, although white (non-Hispanic) students reported greater incidence of sexual harassment by faculty/staff, students of color and white Hispanic students who experienced sexual harassment by faculty/staff generally perceived their campus as less safe than the other female STEM students.

~~~
strken
Interesting that the rate for male students is ~70% of the rate for female
students. I wonder if it's always been that high and nobody noticed, whether
it's going up, or whether the female rate is going down faster.

~~~
danieltillett
...or they define harassment so broadly that almost everyone is included. As a
male scientist (former) I have been "harrassed" by male and female staff on
many occasions, but on a level so trivial that it is totally meaningless.

What we need to worry about is not trivial harassment, but the serious cases
like staff sleeping with their students or continually propositing them with
threats or inducements to their careers. Let's get away from a number grab and
start focusing on the really bad first [1].

1\. My personal experience is the Sciences are the least bad in regard serious
harassment with the Arts the worst by a factor of 10x at least.

~~~
brlewis
The percentages are not consistent with a definition that includes almost
everyone.

~~~
danieltillett
They certainly can be. If you ask 100 people if behaviour x is harassment at
the minor end you will get a lot of variation. As I mentioned before I was
technically sexually harassed many times when I was younger, but I would not
consider myself to have been sexually harassed purely because it was so minor
in my mind. A lot of it was just playful banter that went too far, but some of
it was more than this and not pleasant. In the greater scheme of bad things
that have happened to me in life it was not important.

What is much more of a problem in academia is abuse of power. Academics have
huge power and unfortunately far to many abuse this power at the expense of
their students and postdocs.

~~~
CodeCube
Just because _you_ don't find the casual/small stuff to be a problem, doesn't
mean it's not a problem. Your line will be different than others, you said it
yourself with your comment on the variation ... why discount those who find
that it has been problematic?

~~~
danieltillett
Because as I already mentioned there are far bigger issues to worry about in
Academia. Worrying about trivial harassment is like worrying about a scratch
on your arm when you have a gunshot wound in the gut.

------
shoguning
Professors have too much control over grad students and academic labs are too
insulated from the greater institution. Profs have basically no oversight on
how the treat and/or pay grad students. Any institution serious about tackling
this and many other issues needs to reform the employment relationship with
grad students. Grad student funding should not be coming from one professor's
grant money, but the department.

Independence in scientific direction? Yes. Independence in personnel
management? No.

~~~
cozzyd
Everywhere I'm familiar with the graduate student pay scale is set at the
departmental level

~~~
newen
Even at places where the pay scale is set at the departmental level,
professors have discretion on whether they want to pay you over the summer.
That's 1/4 of your salary.

Also, funding comes straight from the professor. If your advisor decides they
don't have funding, you're out of luck and working on the side, unless your
department is nice enough to give you a teaching assistant job.

~~~
slavik81
I sure it varies, but at my university the supervisior is obligated to pay the
difference between what the department paid and what was promised in the offer
letter.

------
carlyfan
I am an international grad student and a regular commentator on HN here, but
as this topic is quite sensitive, I would like to remain anonymous.

I just knew from a first-hand source, a very accomplished PI was suspended
just a couple of weeks ago from the job held at a large research institute. He
also had appointments at the two largest universities in the same state. The
description was that he "stormed out of the building." Apparently, he (white
male, eh) employs a number of postdocs from China and apparently made out/had
sex with them. It was so ridiculous that there were witnesses of him pushing
the postdoc-single mom baby's cart in the park. The reason is described in the
article: If the postdocs want good recommendations, they better keep their
mouths shut. Oh, and somehow, according to the same source (first-hand),
reports of the sexual harassment from the PI was swept under the rug and was
mysteriously disappeared before the #meeto movement.

As an international student, I understand how hard it is to change jobs as a
student in F-1 visa in here. The visa situation for international students and
postdocs made it especially easy to exploit those people. If you get kicked
out of the lab you're currently in, you have extremely limited time to find a
lab in the same university, otherwise, you will be kicked back to the home
country. If you find out that you're not a good fit for the university then
you're literally fucked -- you can't be employed, you can't have gap time to
find another one. The only way is to find another university who is willing to
adopt you first and then transfer. But heck, that's a catch-22: How can you
find another university if you don't have a good recommendation?

Personally, I can attest to that visa situation from another angle. I have a
very bad taste in my mouth the first week I worked for a public school as a
grad student here. So before I entered grad school, I worked for a public
educational institution in the US as an OPT student after receiving my
bachelor's degree. They were grateful for the extra work I did for them before
I departed for grad school, so they offered to pay me some trivial extra
amount of money. So, to make sure everything was OK, I called up the
international office in the new school to explain the situation. Not waiting
for me to finish my sentence, they threatened to deport me because "I told you
not to work on anything else when you're on F-1 visa." I was totally
disheartened by that response and it literally ruined my whole positive
outlook for the grad school for me.

------
ggg9990
Every industry where powerful men are gatekeepers is like this -- some are
just higher profile than others. Politics, film, and other high profile
industries will be first to be publicized, but it exists everywhere.

~~~
jpm_sd
Yes. Sexual harassment in rife in the... everything.

------
fabian2k
One factor that distinguishes academia here is that the power imbalance can be
far greater compared to employees in a regular company. As a regular employee
the worst case is usually just losing your job. A PhD student has much higher
stakes, as you're potentially risking years of effort and your degree.

A direct conflict with your adviser is not something you want to risk, as it
can easily put you in a terrible situation. You also can't just switch
departments or something like that without losing a lot of progress, if it is
possible at all.

The way science is structured makes it rather susceptible to abuse by people
in authority, and it inherently discourages challenges by PhD students.

------
sheepmullet
> The most common type of sexual harassment is gender harassment, the report
> finds.

I hate the way these reports misuse language and terminology.

No lay person is going to think gender harassment is sexual harassment.

~~~
ksk
They used a legal definition. It makes sense since gender harassment can be an
antecedent to sexual harassment.

[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm)

~~~
sheepmullet
> It makes sense since gender harassment can be an antecedent to sexual
> harassment.

A lot of things can be antecedents to sexual harassment.

This categorization obscures instead of illuminating.

For example part of the findings for the study is transgender people are far
more likely to face sexual harassment from staff.

This sounds like normal harassment and highly unlikely to become sexual in
nature.

The approach you take to stopping this kind of harassment is unlikely to look
anything like the approach you take to stop sexual exploitation.

~~~
ksk
Okay, I agree with some of your vague points, but I don't see anything I can
reply to. Hopefully your misunderstanding has been clarified now? - "these
reports misuse language and terminology."

~~~
sheepmullet
> Hopefully your misunderstanding has been clarified now?

I would like to know the use cases to lumping them together in this
study/report?

From reading the nature article it doesn't seem like the point of the study
was to support a lawsuit - so what purpose does using the legal definition
have?

~~~
ksk
>so what purpose does using the legal definition have?

Because that is the commonly understood definition? Both in the legal and
academic world (I can find citations from 1995 but I bet it was used before
that). As lay people we do get confused when we don't understand those terms.
I know I did, which is why I looked it up.

~~~
sheepmullet
> Because that is the commonly understood definition?

It didn't come from general use by the population.

At some point academia decided to use a definition that deviated from the
mainstream.

Certain fields of academia have a long history of doing this and it has led to
millions of average people being mis-informed.

> As lay people we do get confused when we don't understand those terms.

Yes even the well educated hn reader gets confused - and so how do we fix
this?

Either we have to fix academia or we have to fix reporting on academia.

Especially because the majority of the population does not have the education
or time necessary to properly investigate for themselves.

Propaganda by any other name...

~~~
ksk
I've found that the average hn reader vastly overstretches their expertise.
Its unfair to expect programmers to be subject matter experts in anything
other than their own domain. I take most comments here on
politics/science/economics/etc with a bit of humor.

In this case, I don't think it's _THAT_ complicated to explain what the term
means to the average person. The definition of terms can sometimes be
intuited, but intuition can be wrong and lay people should not necessarily be
the arbiters of definitions of terms. My co-worker refers to their hard disk
storage space as "computer RAM". We know what they meant as opposed to what
they said and can work around it.

------
jupiter90000
Isn't sexual harassment rife pretty much everywhere? When you listen to what
both men and women have really been subjected to, it's just sad and the
prevalence is honestly depressing to me. I even have worked with people who
think they're not the type to sexually harass and then see them engaging the
behavior unknowingly (basically in denial).

~~~
magduf
Sorry if this sounds totally naive, but how exactly does someone not know
they're sexually harassing someone? If you're propositioning someone, making
lewd comments, etc., then how do you not know that that constitutes sexual
harassment?

~~~
toasterlovin
I don't mean this in any way to dismiss sexual harassment as a non-entity, but
in some cases, the difference between flirting and sexual harassment basically
entirely comes down to the level of interest that the recipient has. If
they're into the perpetrator, it's flirting. If they're not, it's harassment.
Given that, surely you can imagine that evolution would favor men who
overestimate the degree to which their advances are viewed as favorable by the
recipient.

------
SolaceQuantum
If anyone is interested in solutions, Frank Dobbin, a professor of sociology
at Harvard that studies the effectiveness of anti sexual harassment programs
has some interesting conclusions here:

> The worst news is probably that men who are hostile to women to begin with
> do not improve with training. Men who score high on “likely harasser” and
> “gender role conflict” scales are the most likely to have adverse reactions
> to training

> In an unpublished paper on diversity training, we find that mandatory
> training reduces actual workforce diversity and voluntary training increases
> it. It looks like forcible training of people who are hostile to the
> training message may backfire.

> Workplace gender equity is still our best bet for reducing harassment, but
> progress on equity has stalled in the corporate world and on the faculty.

[http://www.asanet.org/news-events/footnotes/apr-
may-2018/fea...](http://www.asanet.org/news-events/footnotes/apr-
may-2018/features/can-anti-harassment-programs-reduce-sexual-harassment)

------
tonyquart
Talking about sexual harassment, I have just read an article at
[https://www.lemberglaw.com/what-is-workplace-sexual-
harassme...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/what-is-workplace-sexual-harassment/)
about this matter. I think sexual harassment is a very old crime, but we don't
care about this problem. Thanks to some movements such as #MeToo which have
helped many people to start speaking up about this.

------
cup-of-tea
Sexual harassment is rife everywhere. Every failed attempt at seduction could
be considered harassment. But none of us would be here if our parents didn't
try it.

------
mathattack
It would seem like tenure (making it hard to fire people) compounds this
problem.

~~~
chrisseaton
Tenure does not protect you from being fired for things like inappropriate
behaviour.

~~~
mathattack
Doesn’t it make it harder? Look at recent Stanford scandals.

~~~
chrisseaton
No, they can still fire you for incompetance, discipline, or if they can't
afford you

[https://facultyhandbook.stanford.edu/handbooks/faculty-
handb...](https://facultyhandbook.stanford.edu/handbooks/faculty-
handbook/chapter-4/subchapter-4/page-4-4-2)

Tenure simply means 'without limit of time'. That's all it means.

[https://facultyhandbook.stanford.edu/handbooks/faculty-
handb...](https://facultyhandbook.stanford.edu/handbooks/faculty-
handbook/chapter-2/subchapter-1/page-2-1-3)

------
cs702
Seeing _Nature_ reporting this as news feels to me a bit like watching Captain
Louis Renault telling ‎Rick Blaine:

 _" I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find that gambling is going on in
here!"_[a]

Still, it's progress.

[a]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME)

------
fein
> Landmark US Study!

> Just take our word for it, or else pay $60 for the report itself.

Can we please stop doing this shit?

~~~
edwinksl
Looks like you can download for free as a "guest" but you need to give them an
email address (maybe get a throwaway).

~~~
fein
Sure, but at that point isn't this nature article basically an advertisement
for that report?

~~~
beat
Isn't _every_ Nature article an advertisement for a scientific report you
might have to pay for to get in print?

It's free to read. The button is right there on their page.

~~~
fein
I honestly didn't realize how bad this site is until I clicked around a bit
and saw all the paywall stuff. I always thought they were scholarly articles,
appears not.

~~~
beat
Articles from scholarly journals usually cost money. Nature of the beast for
narrow-interest publishing with no advertiser support. The fact that Nature
links to the source articles is a big plus in my book.

------
ddebernardy
Wasn't there a thing called Gamergate related to that a few years back? I only
followed it from afar, but best I can recollect it seemed like there was a lot
more to sexism in gaming than just within the industry itself.

~~~
vertex-four
Gamergate was largely an attack on women in gaming. What we know of as
Gamergate was largely started by a supposed incident in which a woman had sex
with a video game reporter, and at some point that reporter mentioned or did a
review of one of her games - the focus being more of an attack on her than the
reviewer, of course. This incident, of course, never actually occurred - it
was made up by a romantic partner of hers, as it turns out the reporter in
question never actually mentioned or reviewed her after the sex was meant to
have occurred.

~~~
setr
From what I remember, she slept with multiple reviewers, and the whole thing
became public when her boyfriend at the time complained online about being
cheated on; I also remember there being quite a bit of controversy over the
general illegitimatecy of game reviews, and that both parties were attacking
each other on totally different arguments. The pro-gamergates claiming it was
about corruption of the industry, and the anti-gamergates claiming it was an
attack on women in video games.

Thats what I understood from my far-away vantage point, at least. But its
difficult to imagine it was _just_ the latter; there's not _enough_ sexism in
gaming for it to blow up so easily, I think. (She was hardly the first woman
in gaming to operate unethically).

~~~
crooked-v
> she slept with multiple reviewers

That's a false accusation.

What actually happened was that an angry _ex_ -boyfriend accused her of
sleeping with a gaming journalist to get positive reviews. No such positive
reviews ever happened. The journalist in question made a single off-handed
mention of one of her games (in a non-review context) _before_ they'd ever
actually met in person.

~~~
hueving
>That's a false accusation.

The phrase you're looking for is "unfounded accusation". Unless you are the
woman in question or you were stalking her 24/7, you can't falsify it.

~~~
makomk
It's neither of those things. It's not the accusation that was made at all;
the original claim was that she slept with a reviewer who gave her game
positive coverage. The entire gaming press debunked this based on the
technicality that it wasn't actually a review, but that wasn't the claim that
was going around. Supposedly they also weren't technically in that kind of
relationship until shortly after the press coverage, but that went down less
well as a counter-argument for obvious reasons.

(This also wasn't the focus of the original blog post at all. To cut a
decades-long story short, the reason that particular aspect caught people's
attention was because there were a whole bunch of people who already very
strongly distrusted the entire gaming press for reasons entirely unrelated to
women. Then Reddit started shadowbanning anyone who mentioned the journo's
name, hosters were pressured to shut down sites which covered it, the entire
gaming press declared gamers as a whole misogynistic scum over it, and every
escalation fanned the flames more in typical Streisand-effect fashion. In fact
I don't think it was even mentioned in the blog at all, but I could be wrong.)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The major issue is that in general society values results above all else. As
long as you are producing, with few exceptions, your supporters will back you
up. Look at Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Weinstein (until just recently), Roman
Polanski for examples.

While I hope the focus and importance that #MeToo has brought to the issue of
sexual harassment will be a long term thing, I think human nature being what
it is, people will make the right statements while in reality continuing to
protect and promote harassers as long as they are producing for them (be they
politicians or scientists or engineers).

~~~
cautionarytale
Polanski raped a child. That's a whole different level of awful than
everything else being discussed here.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Completely agree. But look how much support he maintained in Hollywood, even
winning an Oscar for Best Director. The fact that someone who raped a child,
can maintain such support should tell us that getting people and institutions
to really go after harassers(who while awful are not child rape level of
awful) is going to be an uphill battle.

------
beat
Women: No shit.

Men: I FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED!!

Just watch. That's exactly what will happen here.

edit: And the downvotes pour down like rain. No shit.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
You're not getting downvoted for the reason you think. You're getting
downvoted because you're generalizing about an entire gender and don't realize
the irony of that as it relates to your point.

~~~
beat
I think I covered that with "I FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED!!"

It's not "ironic". It's a basic rhetoric technique in discussions of racism
and sexism. If a generalization is made that doesn't _specifically_
(preferably personally) exclude some dude, then suddenly it's all about him
and how offended he is to be lumped in with this thing that of course he
doesn't do. And then the conversation degenerates into said dude(s) howling
about the offense to his sacred honor, and the original topic is lost.

Sit back and watch any online discussion about sexism, you will see this
pattern repeated. Saying the downvotes are because I'm generalizing is missing
the point entirely. That's just an _excuse_ for the downvote.

The _reason_ for the downvote is I pointed out the nasty, toxic, sexist crap,
so I'm getting punished for it.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
There are more constructive ways to make your point. You're right that men are
part of the problem. That also makes them part of the solution. By using
rhetoric that alienates men who can be swayed either way you perpetuate the
problem you are trying to solve.

I think a good example of how to approach this issue constructively is found
in the civil rights movement. The messaging in the civil rights movement
wasn't: white people are doing bad things. It was: black people deserve the
same treatment as everyone else. One of those messages alienates people, the
other unites everyone in a common cause.

Similarly, a more constructive way of viewing the current sexual harassment
issue would be something like: here are some things women experience in the
workplace that we can all agree are wrong, and men have an important role to
play in both not engaging in these actions and in dissuading their colleagues
from engaging in them when they occur.

~~~
beat
I think you're comparing to a fictional version of the civil rights movement,
not the actual response it received. Note the past tense; I'm sure you meant
"MLK", not the modern civil rights movement. Let's dig into that.

The most recent major civil rights protest is the kneeling protest during NFL
games - black (and some white) players taking a knee rather than standing
during the national anthem, to protest racism and state violence against black
people. And millions of white Americans are _furious_. Players are being
punished for it. The president refuses to meet with a team (that
interestingly, had no kneelers before). The vast majority of white Americans
disapprove of this protest.

The nature of the protest? Black men, sitting quietly, saying nothing,
breaking no laws, for about two minutes. And white America is _furious_.

Remember that past tense thing? MLK was assassinated a half a century ago. And
we're _still_ fighting for civil rights, although white America tends to think
of it as a past tense thing where there was no violence and everyone agreed.

Now, take this lesson and apply it to sexism.

