I think many people here are caught up on the word "bullying" and think that perhaps her actions weren't very serious. The reality is that none of us here know what she did. I'm just going to go ahead and trust that the granting organization knows what they're doing with their money.
In the absence of information, I default to siding with who I see as the recipient of the final punishment/jab who never got a trial. The resigned researcher may have just lost her entire career without a trial. Maybe she is guilty - maybe not. And I do not consider knowing how someone reacted to information equivalent to having that information.
You complained they never got a "trial." The person you're responding to was quite correctly pointing out that was completely their choice, a disciplinary hearing would allow all sides to present information, but she effectively plead guilty instead (i.e. take the ultimate sanction).
That isn't necessarily true. Even being accused of things can cause significant damage. Also, a huge grant organization had already pulled their funding.
I used to be very skeptical, as you are, about the same sort of thing. And by the lack of “trial” specifically.
One sort of trial is an investigative report from a journalistic institution with a reputation at stake. When someone pointed this out to me, I was mildly appalled, but I’ve come to agree.
The world’s systems are largely out of our control. It’s true that most systems in place now will seem crazy in less than a century. But it’s also true that you have to deal with them if you want to live a good life.
The problem is that it’s often costly to publish such counterstories. It’s not very socially acceptable to be seen as defending your own action. But you have to, if you want public opinion to be overturned.
Hopefully the institution will support Mrs Rahnan's graduate students, postdocs and technicians. Not only did they suffer while working with an abusive advisor, they are suffering again because a lot of funding went away.
The article links to another article discussing Wellcome's policy.
"The policy defines bullying as a misuse of power that can make people feel vulnerable, upset, humiliated, undermined or threatened. It says harassment is unwanted physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating someone else’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them."
From the article: After receiving a complaint in November, it immediately commissioned an independent investigation by a law firm into the allegations. The intention was to establish whether the allegations were substantiated by evidence — rather than to determine a disciplinary outcome.
ICR were playing by the letter of the law - as they ought to - and sound properly contrite. There must have been a lot of substance.
Since no one here has the facts, people are mostly just arguing about their different associations with the word "bullying". That makes the thread basically about nothing. This is an example of how an intellectually curious discussion requires a minimal level of information. We don't have that in this case.
So “Wellcome Trust“ doesn’t have ebough information (1) but acts based on.. something?
1) “Wellcome bemoans the lack of information available on the affair. “We have been working with the ICR to understand more about their investigation and the allegations that were made against Professor Rahman,” says the statement. “Unfortunately, we do not have the full details of the case because they have not been shared with us.””
If a top scientist bullies many other scientists working under them and drives them away from their field, leading to fewer great minds working on important problems (like cancer research), science loses far more in the long term than if one scientist loses a grant (that presumably is now going to another scientist working on cancer research).
There are dozens to hundreds of capable scientists ready to step into the same place. The role of PI is a lot like that of a CEO, mostly organizing and executing and pulling in grants. They rely on the brilliance and work of their students, though they often contribute ideas.
Cancer research is limited by funding, wall time, and communication bandwidth between scientists, not by talent.
Are you saying that the ends justify the means? I think that's a dangerous frame of mind. Do you think these scientists will be putting their best work forward in a hostile work environment? Do you think they will have enough mental capital to focus on doing good science when they are spending part of that mental load on worrying about being bullied?
Toxic environments and abuse in academia causes science to lose. How many great minds have quit science because they decided the pathetic salary isn't worth being harassed at work?
Sure, the bully should get corrected, but through normal corrective measure such as calling her in for a meeting. This is just absurd.
The only thing that works is meaningful consequences. This includes consequences for the institution - it's clear that there was a litany of complaints about the person, all of which went unheeded.
Apparently, she could have followed disciplinary measures such as going for meetings, but chose to resign instead.
‘the ICR’s independent investigation deemed some of the allegations serious enough to warrant consideration at a disciplinary hearing”. However, Rahman resigned and the disciplinary hearing did not take place.‘
She chose to resign after having a bloody independent investigation started against her.
She might have been a prick, but that's far beyond taking something face to face (i.e. someone above her taking her in to discuss the situation). I would certainly quit any position where an investigation is started against me, regardless of reason.
This is a flat out childish way to deal with the situation.
>the ICR’s independent investigation deemed some of the allegations serious enough to warrant consideration at a disciplinary hearing”. However, Rahman resigned and the disciplinary hearing did not take place.
No, a face to face meeting between adults. Not hiring lawyers to do background research and pulling her in in front of a committee. Like you would in case of such a situation in a normal company.
Once you pull an "independent investigation", you're far beyond taking things like adults anymore. I wouldn't want to work at a place where I get inspected like that.
She might have been an asshole, but this is a childish way of dealing with things, and at the cost of bloody humanity.
Why do you assume a face-to-face meeting wasn't tried?
The exact details are confidential, for the protection of both accused and accusers. Neither one of us knows what really happened. But I can say from experience that someone who is habitually a jerk to their subordinates is not likely to change their habits when called out face-to-face by the same subordinates. They're likely to react with the same hostile dismissiveness that they normally use.
This is not just about saving someone's tender feelings. People with a hostile supervisor are afraid to ask questions and afraid to take risks, and the quality of their work suffers. Bullying your subordinates is irresponsible management and should be treated as such.
I assume that she was not called in by her superiors due to an "independent investigation" being started.
There would never be a need for such thing. If her superior receives complaints from her employees about her, then they already know that she has problems. In management and human psychology, evidence does not matter—if her employees are all dissatisfied with her, then that is all you need to know. They can then either correct her or fire her.
The presence of an "independent investigation" seems to look like someone didn't want to deal with the situation, and instead have an external party be responsible for it. That is irresponsible management from her superiors.
Now, again, she might have been a prick worth firing, but I certainly do not find this response to be sensible, nor is her resignation proof of anything as any sensible person would quit a workplace that runs "investigations" against them (just like you are likely to quit a place where your boss is a bully).
Linus Torvalds is, by all accounts, a bully. But that's how science goes sometimes; it is unforgiving and will make you feel stupid and inadequate, why blame the messenger? And science is hard! People regularly get in your way with shitty ideas, especially when you've hit upon something great like Linux or cancer gene discoveries.
I kind of dealt with this at work recently. We were asked to disable the right click menu on our website. A business analyst thought that it would solve a session management problem and instead of asking us how to solve the problem, thought that they would prescribe this solution to us. I tried to kill this right out of the gate; "This is a bad idea, it doesn't do what you want, if you want better session handling we don't do it this way, so let's close this story and discuss a better approach". Nope, that wasn't good enough. Cue 2 weeks of meetings explaining what the right click menu does and how it doesn't even come close to solving the real problem. I really just wanted to call this BA an idiot and bully the problem away, it would have saved a significant amount of time and frustration for multiple parties.
So I'm imagining this geneticist in similar situations. "Hey, I heard that vitamin C can splice this gene better than how you're doing it, why don't you try?". Cue angry response that could get construed as bullying.
All that being said, there are mean people who just fumble about destroying everything in their wake. So lacking any information about this person's bullying... who knows.
Not that again. Some people will defend him because the people he really lets loose on is not newcomers but very experienced contributors from whom he expects better.
It's a cultural issue. Recently I spoke to a US general, who as a young officer served as a liaison officer in Germany. He found the German directness "refreshing".
Even that is not helpful to the recipient of the feedback.
How about:
"Here is a list of standards every code check-in is required to meet. Here are the standards that your current P/R fails. Try again. Do you need help with anything specific? When can you have a new P/R ready?."
If applicable: "This delays the schedule, what is your recovery plan?:
And occasionally: "At your pay grade, you are expected to know these standards."
Dispassionate? Let me tell you, if you have ever had an ex-commando officer from the Israeli Defense Force as a boss, you will know with every fiber of your being that those words can be delivered with passion.
A passion that leaves no doubt in your mind that "What is your recovery plan?" is not a soft-ball question, and that a soft-ball answer will be promptly discarded. In my case, said boss took part in Operation Entebbe. He ran a very low-BS engineering organization. It was refreshing in a very good way.
> I really just wanted to call this BA an idiot and bully the problem away, it would have saved a significant amount of time and frustration for multiple parties.
That's about as effective as solving your problem as disabling the contextual menu was for solving theirs. That ensures they'll be working against you and not with you.
Absolutely, which was why I fought the urge and didn't say it. But if I was getting these requests all the time, all throughout my career, yeah, my guard would get worn down and some harsh words would slip out.
> A business analyst thought that it would solve a session management problem and instead of asking us how to solve the problem, thought that they would prescribe this solution to us. ... I really just wanted to call this BA an idiot and bully the problem away, it would have saved a significant amount of time and frustration for multiple parties.
I totally understand your frustration and reaction here, as I've had the same.
I've found the best way to deal with this is right away start reframing this back to a business problem, often in the form of a user story ("As a _____ user, I want to _____ so I can _____"). Keep asking "why" to refine it down to what is really trying to be accomplished. The point is to not get into an argument about a technical implementation with someone who doesn't have the knowledge to argue about it (whether they realize it or not), because it's nearly impossible to not come across as a bully.
In this situation I would almost outright dismiss the suggestion of the right-click, saying something like "Forget the right-click thing for a minute; In business terms, what is it you're trying to prevent and why?". We're both trying to solve a business (or user-facing) problem here, let's make sure we're both on the same page about that before we even begin to discuss how to do it.
I am very up front with people about my process: If you bring me a perceived solution, I'm always going to boil it back to a problem and work from there. Sometimes I -- or more often we, the dev team -- might come to the same conclusion, but I'd say the vast majority of times, in my experience, we will come up with a better implementation that takes less time to implement, has other benefits that are not part of the original objective, and/or avoids a major downside not originally thought of.
Arguing is going to make you seem like a bully; calmly reframing the discussion shows you're trying to work together.
> I really just wanted to call this BA an idiot and bully the problem away, it would have saved a significant amount of time and frustration for multiple parties.
If someone with authority over you isn't willing to take "no" for an answer, they're not going to take "no, you idiot" either. That doesn't save time, it just takes you from "wasting time" to "wasting time and also people are pissed at you."
> If someone with authority over you isn't willing to take "no" for an answer, they're not going to take "no, you idiot" either.
They might! An insult is like a splash of cold water to the face, it's a wake up call. When used surgically, it can push people to do great things. The BA was so, so grossly wrong about what the right click menu does and how websites work that maybe an insult would have caused him to go back and google a few things.
Have you ever seen the movie Whiplash? Without the anguish caused by the conductor, do you think our drummer would have pushed himself to become a better drummer?
