Report harassment or risk losing funding, says top UK science funder

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
One of the world’s largest research-funding charities is cracking down on harassment and bullying. Scientists who have been sanctioned by their institutions could lose out on funding from the Wellcome Trust, under rules announced on 3 May.

It is the first major UK research funder to institute such a policy; the US National Science Foundation introduced a similar rules earlier this year.

Wellcome’s policy will come into force for new grant applications on 1 June, and will apply to anyone already associated with a grant, including those whose projects are already under way. It gives Wellcome, a biomedical-research charity in London, the right to withhold funding from a researcher or bar them from applying for future grants.

It also levies sanctions against institutions that fail to disclose details of such misconduct, do not investigate allegations in a timely and fair manner, or take inappropriate action. In extreme circumstances, sanctions could include suspending funding from an entire organization.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05071-7

Now where does Crawley get her funding from?
 
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.
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I was actually thinking of Crawley's bullying and/or harassing behaviour that we've seen from her towards patients. See parts of http://me-pedia.org/wiki/Esther_Crawley#Controversies_and_Criticism
 
Maybe they will eventually get concerned about researchers general ethical behaviour. I would be interesting if research funders sanctioned Bristol University because they had failed to deal with researchers who didn't get ethical approval
 
I share these reservations:

Philip Maini, a biological mathematician at the University of Oxford, UK, questions how effective the policy will be. Scientists are under extreme pressure to bring in grants and publish research papers, providing a fertile breeding ground for bullying and harassment, he says.

“If an institution has someone bringing in huge amounts of overhead and publishing in Nature and Science,” Mani says, “are they really going to take action against them if they are a bully? I think not.”
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Adrian said:
Maybe they will eventually get concerned about researchers general ethical behaviour. I would be interesting if research funders sanctioned Bristol University because they had failed to deal with researchers who didn't get ethical approval
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Absolutely. That was also running through my mind. They most certainly should toughen up on it.
 
Inara said:
I share these reservations:
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It does get very tricky. I imagine there must be plenty of examples through history of some genuinely brilliant scientific breakthroughs, benefiting many, where the lead scientist(s) may be pretty unpleasant. Academic genius and human decency are not necessarily co-existent.
 
Barry said:
It does get very tricky. I imagine there must be plenty of examples through history of some genuinely brilliant scientific breakthroughs, benefiting many, where the lead scientist(s) may be pretty unpleasant. Academic genius and human decency are not necessarily co-existent.
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Which makes it all the more important that the people employing such scientists don't put them in positions where they have power over others, and make it clear to them what behaviour is and is not acceptable, and take seriously reports of harassment, including bullying and sexual harassment, which is never acceptable, however brilliant the scientist.
 
Barry said:
It does get very tricky. I imagine there must be plenty of examples through history of some genuinely brilliant scientific breakthroughs, benefiting many, where the lead scientist(s) may be pretty unpleasant. Academic genius and human decency are not necessarily co-existent.
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And I'd suggest that a counter argument to this could be: the chances are strong that untalented bullies have prevented many breakthroughs from happening by unfairly suppressing more talented junior colleagues.
 
Andy said:
And I'd suggest that a counter argument to this could be: the chances are strong that untalented bullies have prevented many breakthroughs from happening by unfairly suppressing more talented junior colleagues.
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Yes, that is also a possibility I had missed.
 
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