Whistleblowing in Academia

Last updated: 8 May 2021

This review consider: How safe is whistleblowing in academia? What do change makers think about bullying or harassment coverups in academia? The Rochester University, Dartmouth College, and The Sanger Institute Scandal. Life after whistleblowing. Nancy Olivieri's legacy. Who are some of the COVID-19 linked whistleblowers? What are the most common traits of 'Independent Investigations' into whistleblowing complaints?

Why might you need to blow the whistle?

Politicisation, corruption and suppression of science:

Failure of philanthropy organization(s) to positively reimagine research

Prominent scientific harassers at top universities who need to be held accountable:

Universities are actively covering up to protect harassing professor assets from the US to Australia:

How much does it cost to blow the whistle?

How safe is whistleblowing in academia?

Whistleblowing in academia is not perceived as a safe step as only 10.5% of 1126 academic whistleblowers surveyed felt that they would be protected to a large extent (1).

Whistleblowers also have a mixed record of success in False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuits against research universities that involve allegations of scientific misconduct:

What do change makers think about bullying or harassment coverups in academia?

How do some philanthropy charities investigate allegations?

Some key whistleblowing cases and whistleblower heroes in addition to Ula's case are featured below:

Rochester University Sex Scandal

In March 2020, University of Rochester Settled Sex Harassment Case by Florian Jaeger for $9.4 million, ending a two and a half year trial for justice by nine plaintiffs (Jessica Cantlon, Celeste Kidd, Richard Aslin, Steven Piantadosi, Brad Mahon, Ben Hayden, Elissa Newport and Keturah Bixby) through forced litigation that started in September 2017. The plaintiffs also alleged retaliation by other faculty members and administrators for blowing the whistle on their colleague and instructor (3).

Dartmouth College Rape and Hot Tub Parties Scandal

In November 2018, Chris Spargo reported on how Dartmouth College professors 'raped, sexted and groped students, invited cocaine use in class and hosted late night hot-tub parties' states $70M lawsuit filed by seven victims (3). Key highlights of this case are:

• Seven female students at Dartmouth filed a lawsuit against the college's trustees claiming they protected professors' sexual misconduct. The students included Sasha Brietzke, Annemarie Brown, Vassiki Chauhan, Andrea Courtney, Marissa Evansin, Kristina Rapuano. Kristina Rapuano claims that she was raped by Kelley in 2015 while?Vassiki Chauhan says she was raped by Whelan in 2017
• Todd Heatherton, William Kelley and Paul Whalen, men who all worked in the?Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth, 'leered at, groped, sexted, intoxicated and even raped female students' states the lawsuit. All three of the men retired before they could be fired, but the?New Hampshire Attorney General's office has launched a criminal investigation
• Dartmouth responded to the $70 million suit by praising the women for coming forward but denied allegations that it ignored complaints dating back to 2002

Wellcome Sanger Institute Scandal

Sanger employs almost 1,000 scientists and is supported by a recurrent 5-year grant from the Wellcome Trust, which amounts to ￡517 million (US$670 million) for 2017–21.

Senior staff have been mistreated and bullied with many pressured to leave their posts at short notice as due process was not followed when staff raised grievances and that these problems have disproportionately affected female staff. Read more about it (4)

Whistleblower calls on universities to do more to safeguard students in 2017

Carole Mundell, a renowned professor of astrophysics who was a whistleblower in the case of a colleague accused of sexually harassing one of her students has called on universities to do more to improve the safeguarding of students (5).

Life after whistleblowing

Aubrey Blumsohn, who left his post as a senior lecturer in metabolic bone disease at the?University of Sheffield, after raising concerns in 2005 about research on a drug made by Procter & Gamble, a funder of research at Sheffield says whistleblowing?“damaged my career. But I’m not really sure I wanted a career by the end of it…There were so many people in prominent leadership positions who behaved so appallingly, I just couldn’t carry on within the profession. I just felt sick about the whole thing.” (6).

Nancy Olivieri and David Healy

As outlined in reference 7, not coincidentally, the Olivieri and Healy scandals share in common a number of key elements:

• Wealthy and powerful drug companies hover in the background of both, and sometimes occupy a good deal of the foreground, as well: Apotex in the case of Olivieri, Eli Lilly in the case of Healy.
• These drug companies not only fund university and hospital researchers, they are also major donors to the institutions within which researchers carry out their clinical studies.
• Neither Apotex nor Eli Lilly was happy to have adverse information about their drugs publicised.
• Both Olivieri and Healy personally experienced serious negative consequences from their willingness to speak publicly about potential dangers to patients.
• Each of them appealed for assistance, unavailingly, to the senior administrators of the University of Toronto and its Faculty of Medicine. Although there had been a changeover of university presidents and medical faculty deans in the interval between these two scandals, personnel changes made very little difference to the university’s official response.
• In both scandals, university and hospital officials failed to recognise that there had been a fundamental violation of the principle of academic freedom at the affiliated hospitals.
• In both cases, the whistleblowing physicians found themselves removed from their positions: Olivieri was fired from her position as director of the Hemoglobinopathy Research Program at Sick Kids’ Hospital; Healy’s employment contract with both CAMH and the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry was terminated.
• Both hospitals and the university denied strenuously that these “firings” were in any way related to the whistleblowing.
• Damaging rumours were circulated among Olivieri’s colleagues, including allegations that she was scientifically incompetent, guilty of stealing money from her research grants, unethical in her patient care and sleeping with some of the scientists who looked favourably on her research findings1; damaging rumours were circulated about Healy that he was a bad clinician, and both a racist, and a member of a cult known as Scientology. A journalist who telephoned me for an interview at the height of the Healy controversy asked whether I knew that Healy was a prominent Scientologist. Her previous interviewee had been a hospital spokesperson who was circulating that piece of disinformation among the media, presumably in an effort to discredit Dr Healy.
• The perpetrators of these false but damaging accusations against Olivieri and Healy mostly preferred to remain anonymous.

Who are some of the COVID-19 linked whistleblowers?

2020 whistleblower of the Year Candidate, Rebekah Jones @GeoRebekah not only filed a whistleblower retaliation case against Florida in July, but also became a vocal critic of @GovRonDeSantis, accusing him of minimizing the pandemic reported by @CCWhistleblower

Rick A Bright: For both his prescience and bravery in sounding the alarm about rampant “cronyism” and corruption at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as he pressed for a more robust COVID-19 response and opposed the stockpiling of hydroxychloroquine, and for his scientific integrity, Dr. Rick Bright is nominated for Constantine Cannon’s?2020 Whistleblower of the Year. His lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks,?explained?that Dr. Bright “could no longer sit idly by and work for an administration that ignores scientific expertise, overrules public health guidance and disrespects career scientists, resulting in the sickness and death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.” (11)

What are the most common traits of 'Independent Investigations' into whistleblowing complaints?

As pointed out within the review on how to combat workplace misconduct (8), a report on institutional response to complaints in relation to sexual harassment that was prepared for the 1752 groups in September 2018, reports that most victims who seek justice are left disheartened and shattered after speaking up against the institution:

“I put my faith in the process, and I really regret having done that, because they didn’t get it right. They didn’t have the requisite training, they didn’t have the requisite understanding. They were not capable of making an assessment.”?Fiona, PhD student

The procedural failures that you may need to brace yourself for include your institutions:

• Failure to include evidence/witnesses that a complainant puts forward
• Failure to adequately assess evidence with equal weight and on balance of probability
• Lack of expertise among investigators or decision-makers
• Processes that allow the staff member under investigation to sabotage the process or use it to continue their abuse. This could take the form of the staff member using delaying tactics to postpone hearings or meetings, or using tribunal hearings to attack the complainant
• Getting the student or complainant themselves to contact other potential witnesses/complainants. This was used in one case as evidence of collusion by the complainants, which contributed towards the outcome of the investigation being overturned at appeal stage
• Failure to share evidence equally with complainants/witnesses
• Failure to inform witnesses/complainants that their evidence would be shared with the staff member under investigation
• Confusion as to whether interviewees were witnesses or complainants and lack of clarity around the rights of each
• Lack of communication from the institution to the complainant/witness
• Lack of support and advocacy from institution to student
• Lack of legal support/advice for students/complainants

Survival Guide To Whistleblowing

Also here is a guide to a fair process in whistleblowing on harassment in academia:

Victims have been advised to quit and sue rather than complain about harassment at universities:

Here are some guidelines from the UK:

Social media

@SangerScandal @DrNancyOlivieri @DrDavidHealy @kristinarapuano @batssiki @risss_evans @andreawcourtney @sbrietz @CGMundell @celestekidd @spiantado @CantlonLab

References

1. How should researchers cope with the ethical demands of discovering research misconduct? Going beyond reporting and whistleblowing | Life Sciences, Society and Policy | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)
2. The University of Rochester Scandal?lnkd.in/eH_wtak and https://twitter.com/NeuroPolarbear/status/1243576098950176774?s=20
3. Dartmouth College professors 'raped, sexted and groped students, invited cocaine use in class' | Daily Mail Online, https://twitter.com/sbrietz/status/1063052881362931712?s=20?
4. Wellcome Sanger Institute Scandal?lnkd.in/dUpF3q3
5. Whistleblower calls on universities to do more to safeguard students | Sexual harassment | The Guardian
6. Life after whistleblowing | Times Higher Education (THE)
7. Biomedical conflicts of interest: a defence of the sequestration thesis—learning from the cases of Nancy Olivieri and David Healy | Journal of Medical Ethics (bmj.com) and The Olivieri debacle: where were the heroes of bioethics? (nih.gov), (PDF) Whistleblowing in academic medicine | Rosamond Rhodes - Academia.edu,

1. How to combat workplace misconduct

1. Ula Scandal

1. 2020 Whistleblower of the Year Candidate – Rebekah Jones - Constantine Cannon and https://twitter.com/BRAINCURES/status/1346248212580073477?s=20?
2. 2020 Whistleblower of the Year Candidate – Dr. Rick Bright - Constantine Cannon