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posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 22 2018, @06:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-tolerance-of-intolerance dept.

Bullying and harassment are just plain wrong. (Alyson Fox, director of grants, Wellcome Trust)

A top geneticist has lost her funding based on bullying allegations, reports Nature.

The top scientist, Nazneen Rahman, was accused by scientists and staff at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London of bullying behavior. Following the allegations, the ICR commissioned a law firm to carry out an independent investigation. Rather than waiting for a disciplinary hearing, Ms Rahman instead notified the ICR that she would leave after her research grant would be finished come October.

Now the UK biomedical charity which funded Ms Rahman's research has decided to act earlier, and pulled her funding. This, the Wellcome Trust claims, is in line with their new anti-bullying policy. In this, the Trust, as a first in the UK, followed the lead of the US National Science Foundation.

While the NSF's policy focused on sexual harassment, the Trust's policy takes things a bit further.

Their 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.

It should be noted though that the Trust bases its decision on allegations without having detailed knowledge of these allegations; nor has Ms Rahman been able (or willing) to defend herself against these allegations.

The Trust states that bullying "causes significant harm, stops people achieving their full potential and stifles good research."


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:58PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:58PM (#724854) Journal

    Intentions matter. But the effects matter too.

    If you accidentally run someone over. Intentions don't matter.

    Maybe someone thinks they were bullied but the supposed bully was merely having a bad day getting their unit tests to run.

    Bullying is probably an ongoing thing, not a one time thing. A pattern which indicates someone is a bully. Now do the intentions matter? If someone is unintentionally a bully, they are still a bully and the anti bullying policy should apply. Or not because it can be blamed on their unfortunate childhood or social injustice or something.

    In another SN topic someone indicated they had to punch a time card. I would find that as insulting as they did. It implies you are not honest enough to manage your own time and achieve expected goals. But at least we don't (yet) have a camera in every office or cubicle to ensure that everyone works every moment and behaves like a good machine.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:48PM (#724883)

    No, we are talking about people who do sloppy as hell work and have no idea what they are talking about. People who are doing untold harm to animals, patients, society and even civilization by polluting the scientific literature. When its pointed out to them they dont even argue that anythings wrong with the argument, but say its "too hard" to do a good job. When pointed out again they call it bullying.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:35PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:35PM (#724914) Journal

    >and behaves like a good machine.
    You say that as if it were a negative trait. Stop bullying.

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    Account abandoned.