May 7, 2025 05:49 PM
(This post was last modified: May 7, 2025 05:59 PM by C C.)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01207-8
EXCERPTS: At one of Germany’s top-funded universities, a high-profile biology researcher has bullied his large group of junior staff, targeting women and international students, for decades.
[...] The university is aware of his behaviour. Yet, no investigation has been conducted nor any sanctions imposed because the complainants requested anonymity, fearing retribution — anonymity that cannot be upheld in an investigation owing to German labour law. This, along with defamation and other laws in Germany, can make it difficult to report on these incidents or to impose sanctions against professors, most of whom are tenured civil servants.
Germany is not the only country to have a problem with bullying in academia, but a combination of structural and legal powers that, in effect, protect tenured professors over early-career researchers, enables and emboldens abusers. “It’s considered culturally normal — this is just what science is like,” says Daniel Leising...
[...] Although the details given by the 14 lab members relate to one professor’s case, the pattern of reported behaviour is similar across several cases that have made headlines in Germany in recent years...
[...] Leising says that these and other press reports of abuse are crucial, supporting growing calls for structural reforms. Amid increased concern that academic abuse was rampant but under-reported, Leising and his colleagues were asked by the German Psychological Society in 2022 to write a report identifying the factors that give rise to academic power abuse in science in Germany.
[...] Leising’s report and this article focus on universities, but other independent research institutions, including the Max Planck Institutes, are not immune to similar abuse complaints, as has been reported by news outlets...
[...] Whatever minimal oversight academic departments have, they rarely exercise it, says Leising. Kübler says: “The strong hierarchy is a problem. And there is no official way for people who suffer from power abuse to know they will receive some help.”
Structural changes are being pursued, but these are modest. At the national level, scientists are lobbying to extend the length of contracts for early-career researchers to four years, which they consider to be the minimum length of time necessary to finish a PhD. And one German state, North Rhine-Westphalia, is attempting to prevent professors from being both a graduate supervisor and a grader. Furthermore, some university departments are restructuring to flatten power dynamics and create more permanent positions. Many countries also have problematic academic hierarchies and will be watching Germany’s progress...
[...] Leising points out that power-abuse behaviours — including lying, cheating and predation — can be characteristics of ‘functional psychopaths’. “But in German academia, they may find particularly fertile soil to act on their impulses without ever being called out for it, or punished,” says Leising. In fact, he adds, some of them are cheered on by the institutional leadership. The term functional academic psychopath was first outlined in a 2018 study, which determined that, without strong institutional constraints on such people, bullying behaviours will prevail.
“It is a threat to the integrity of research,” Lasser says. “People are under so much pressure, it creates sloppy science in the best cases, and outright data falsification in the worst case.”
One of the biggest challenges, says Lasser, is that her network can’t do anything more than provide support and help the people who experience abuse to contact the appropriate university grievance channels. “I see people running from one organization to the next, not getting help,” she says... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: At one of Germany’s top-funded universities, a high-profile biology researcher has bullied his large group of junior staff, targeting women and international students, for decades.
[...] The university is aware of his behaviour. Yet, no investigation has been conducted nor any sanctions imposed because the complainants requested anonymity, fearing retribution — anonymity that cannot be upheld in an investigation owing to German labour law. This, along with defamation and other laws in Germany, can make it difficult to report on these incidents or to impose sanctions against professors, most of whom are tenured civil servants.
Germany is not the only country to have a problem with bullying in academia, but a combination of structural and legal powers that, in effect, protect tenured professors over early-career researchers, enables and emboldens abusers. “It’s considered culturally normal — this is just what science is like,” says Daniel Leising...
[...] Although the details given by the 14 lab members relate to one professor’s case, the pattern of reported behaviour is similar across several cases that have made headlines in Germany in recent years...
[...] Leising says that these and other press reports of abuse are crucial, supporting growing calls for structural reforms. Amid increased concern that academic abuse was rampant but under-reported, Leising and his colleagues were asked by the German Psychological Society in 2022 to write a report identifying the factors that give rise to academic power abuse in science in Germany.
[...] Leising’s report and this article focus on universities, but other independent research institutions, including the Max Planck Institutes, are not immune to similar abuse complaints, as has been reported by news outlets...
[...] Whatever minimal oversight academic departments have, they rarely exercise it, says Leising. Kübler says: “The strong hierarchy is a problem. And there is no official way for people who suffer from power abuse to know they will receive some help.”
Structural changes are being pursued, but these are modest. At the national level, scientists are lobbying to extend the length of contracts for early-career researchers to four years, which they consider to be the minimum length of time necessary to finish a PhD. And one German state, North Rhine-Westphalia, is attempting to prevent professors from being both a graduate supervisor and a grader. Furthermore, some university departments are restructuring to flatten power dynamics and create more permanent positions. Many countries also have problematic academic hierarchies and will be watching Germany’s progress...
[...] Leising points out that power-abuse behaviours — including lying, cheating and predation — can be characteristics of ‘functional psychopaths’. “But in German academia, they may find particularly fertile soil to act on their impulses without ever being called out for it, or punished,” says Leising. In fact, he adds, some of them are cheered on by the institutional leadership. The term functional academic psychopath was first outlined in a 2018 study, which determined that, without strong institutional constraints on such people, bullying behaviours will prevail.
“It is a threat to the integrity of research,” Lasser says. “People are under so much pressure, it creates sloppy science in the best cases, and outright data falsification in the worst case.”
One of the biggest challenges, says Lasser, is that her network can’t do anything more than provide support and help the people who experience abuse to contact the appropriate university grievance channels. “I see people running from one organization to the next, not getting help,” she says... (MORE - details)