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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."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @12:09AM (1 child)
Why do you think "engineers" and "software developers" don't like hierarchy. Have you seen Linus Torvals and how tightly he holds control over the Linux kernel (thank goodness... and don't you try to argue that he's a manager and doesn't know how to code). Or do you let the new intern have root access to your production servers?
Why do you think "marketing" likes hierarchy? Have you seen Mad Men? Granted it's fiction, but there is some truth in the sterotype of "uses illegal drugs for energy and a desperate search for inspiration," among other hair-raising things.
This classification is way too simplistic and just plain wrong. If anything, it reminds me of:
I suspect you're the 3rd.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 23 2018, @07:26PM
I have not seen Mad Men.
As for Linus, needing hierarchy is not the same as liking it and creating it for its own end even when unnecessary.
As a rule interns would not root access to production servers. There are probably interns who are the exception and are exceptional.
If I used a number with 0-9 and A-F you might assume it was hexadecimal. But you would be wrong if I was using base 23. But then I could say you don't know the difference. When seeing "10 types of people", the most I can assume is that you are using a radix that is at least 2, since the largest digit in "10" is a 1. If I said there are "70" types of people, then you could safely assume I'm using at least base 8, or higher. But you would have no definite indication of what radix I'm using, and that doesn't mean you are confused.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.