This is an article about bullying and abuse by professors and managers of academic labs. It's a huge problem, because early-career researchers depend heavily on approval and references from PIs, and there's a strong element of path-dependence in many academic career situations: you often can't easily just quit and join a different lab. You're captive to the abuse.
As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I'm interested if people have any horror stories of their own to share about abusive PIs (just because I worry about my own kids and what they're going to face in their fields).
I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like "my friend's PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend's appendix had just burst; the PI said 'I don't care about your appendix'". Or the lab where the researchers had brought in special furniture to create a private area to cry in after the PI had finished berating them. Or the abusive lab with an anomalously high number of suicides.
As someone with two kids working in academic STEM research labs, I'm interested if people have any horror stories of their own to share about abusive PIs (just because I worry about my own kids and what they're going to face in their fields).
I asked this on a Slack the other day, and I got stories like "my friend's PI called and demanded he come in to work, but my friend's appendix had just burst; the PI said 'I don't care about your appendix'". Or the lab where the researchers had brought in special furniture to create a private area to cry in after the PI had finished berating them. Or the abusive lab with an anomalously high number of suicides.