ssfgrad

Hi all! I haven't posted here in quite some time, but this site has been an excellent resource for me in terms of non-biased advice and support. I am a third year PhD student with a focus in neuroscience at a medical school. Before coming here I spent a year in an eeeeeeeeextremely toxic lab at another university. It was so bad that I quit working on my PhD and started over at my current university. After that experience, advocating for graduate student support and rights has become a huge deal to me. I am an officer in the student government association and I am working very closely with our SGA president to advocate changes that will protect students who end up in bad situations. A little background, I am currently in a great lab with a great PI who supports me, but that doesn't seem to be the norm at this university. This university's climate seems to be 20 years behind what I have experienced at other schools. Sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior/comments toward students, screaming at students, throwing things at students, antiquated expectations of 70 hour work weeks, zero tolerance for work-life balance, and various other psychological torture tactics are all kind of common place here. Upon joining the program, senior graduate students pull the incoming students aside to give them a list of faculty "to avoid", but other than that there is no precedent for graduate student protection. Several students (and faculty members) have left the university because of the climate and there are active lawsuits. We have a graduate coordinator, but anytime anyone speaks with her about problems she seems to turn it around on the student. She says things like, "Are you certain it's not something YOU are doing that is making this person act this way?". We have a "graduate council" made up of several faculty members (some of which are on the "to avoid" list) which is supposed to serve as a last ditch mediation for students. Students aren't comfortable with speaking to a group of faculty members about these types of problems. I did some research and realized that medical students at our university have access to an ombudsperson, a person whose job it is to be an impartial negotiator and resolve issues. An ombudsperson is just as much a resource to a university as it is to an individual, as they are impartial. I reached out to the ombudsperson and was told that she is only for the medical school. Our SGA president has spoken with her to see how much it would cost to absorb ~50 graduate students under her umbrella, she said that there would be zero cost. Our graduate coordinator and dean of graduate studies are refusing to let us have access to this resource. They really will not give us a good reason why, which is beyond concerning. We were first told that it would be too expensive. Then we were asked by the graduate coordinator, "why would you need an ombudsperson when you have me?". The SGA president is being told that she will not be put on the agenda for council meetings to speak about it. It just overall seems that they want to be able to sweep any graduate student issues under the rug. I would love to get anyone's opinion on this matter. Is there any legal precedent? How would you handle this situation? Thanks!

I know, right! My friends think I should write a book ?. I received the grant btw, I walked right past the old lab to accept it. Sweet, sweet victory. Now, onto bigger and better things!

Hello all! It has been a whirlwind of year for me completing all of my PhD coursework over again at a new university (no the credits did not transfer). There is now an end in sight and I wanted to give you an update on this crazy story. First off, I am doing wonderfully in my new lab. In fact, all of those hours of needlessly troubleshooting my work in my old lab has made me a very proficient bench scientist. My new project is really killer and is gaining some traction/winning some tiny university based awards. Each little win I get solidifies my decision on leaving my old lab. Right now I am at a scientific conference and my old lab is in attendance. My old PI and Sarah are here! It’s very awkward and this is the first time I have seen them since I quit. Unfortunately, this is going to be something I deal with because we are still very much in the same field. I have just held my head up and moved on each time I’ve seen them. I have been a little nervous that Sarah would try to fabricate a story about me, which is why I have made sure to always have someone around me while walking around. Here is what I can gather based on their presentations/behavior. Veronica graduated after seven years in the lab. It looks like she never received a first authored publication and that all of her pubs were authored by Sarah. The PI gave a talk on Veronica’s dissertation work and she isn’t listed as a coauthor on it. An undergrad gave a poster closely borrowing from the project that I designed while in the lab. All in all, it seems that it is still as toxic as ever. This is my first time at this specific conference and the old lab knows a lot of people, so it has been pretty intimidating but I am pushing through. This afternoon there is an awards ceremony and they are announcing grant awardees for a grant that I applied for. Fingers crossed! I wanted to update here since this post has chronicled all of the ins and outs of my situation. Cheers!

I got into the new lab! This lab is even more tailor made for me than the last lab. If anything I am annoyingly tenacious, so that definitely helped me through the application process. I wanted to post this update because so many people in this thread helped me through one of the darkest times in my career. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! Also, to those that private messaged me expressing that they were having similar experiences, please trust your gut. If your gut says "run", run. There will always be other opportunities out there. If I had stayed in that lab my work would have been subpar and the stress would have taken years off of my life. Now, I am onto better and brighter things.

Thanks again everyone! Being without my research has been extremely difficult, but I am in a much better place than I was in that lab. I will definitely need to look into training myself to be more political. I really just never expected this to happen to me. I have a BS in psychology, which I think allowed me to see through Sarah's psychopathies. Ultimately, when she realized that I was on to her (when my lab work worked for the first time while she was out of town) she would have stopped at nothing to get me out of there. Good riddance. NOW FOR SOME GOOD(ISH) NEWS! I have an interview with another lab at another university! I would be doing research on my dream organism! I am very excited, but very nervous at the same time. Coming out of my masters I was confident in my abilities, but after this last experience I feel bottomed out. I am very worried that leaving this lab will be a strike on my record. I know the new potential PI knows my old PI, but I don't know how well. I know that I need to be honest with him about my past to prevent future skeletons from rearing their ugly heads. The question is how honest? Obviously, I can not go in there spewing old drama or throwing my ex-PI under the bus. This forum has been so helpful. Any help with this next step would be amazing! Thanks.

...the lab that she was in during undergrad cannot replicate any of her data. So, I think there is a very good chance she could be doing just that. As for the last part, I'm not entirely sure what you mean. The only light I can find from this horrible situation is being able to grow from it. I do feel that this will make me a better scientist, though it doesn't make it any easier now. Is there any way you could explain what handling this politically means? I mean no animosity, but I do wish to come out of this a better person. This means exploring every angle and growing from my own mistakes as well. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for all of the help everyone. This thread was really the only place I could talk about this for a while. I did resign, and I do not have another lab lined up. I am a non-traditional student, with a family and a house. It will take me a couple of years to logistically prepare for a move to another university. I can now say, I 100% made the right choice. It has been so incredibly difficult to walk away from something that I hold so close to me, especially through no fault of my own. I cannot lie, I am battling what I can only describe as PTSD. Its bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to how I felt in that lab. I reported my situation to the department head and the graduate school, with all of the details and all of the names. I would love to see Sarah be found out, but mostly I wanted to make sure a record was created to prevent anyone from going through this again. Just to give everyone an update on how my resignation went: -I pled my case to my PI, for what felt like the 100th time. It was long winded. Basically, I told her that I believed that Sarah was very dangerous and that I could not be associated with things I viewed as unethical. -The PI told me that she may be biased due to Sarah's productivity, but she didn't think that I had all of my information correct. She explained to me why everyone who thought that Sarah was a saboteur was wrong. The master's student who graduated before I got there "was crazy". John's stuff "just never worked". Veronica was "just at a point in her research" where she thought that. For my research it was explained by, "sometimes stuff just doesn't work and then it does". She said that she was sorry to see me go, but didn't see any other option. She asked that I email my committee and tell them I was resigning. -I emailed my committee. Most people responded with very nice, but shocked emails. I know that I come across as a capable, passionate, level headed scientist, so I'm sure they were very shocked. One committee member, who Veronica and the previous MS student were close with emailed me back. She asked why I was resigning. I knew that Veronica and the other student had spoken to this professor about Sarah, but had not mentioned sabotage. I explained to the professor that I didn't know how much I could divulge, but I resigned because I felt that another graduate student was abusive. She pressed me and so I sent her a link to this posting. She then explained to me that if a lab has secrets like this it is a total red flag. She also said that if I had talked to people in the department I would have found out that Sarah is viewed by many as "diabolical". -I know what you're thinking, why didn't I talk to anyone sooner? I would have been treated like (more of) a pariah by the lab if I did that. Also, I don't think working under this PI was in my best interest. She clearly was not going to be swayed away from Sarah's insanity. I would never be allowed to produce quality work there. So, now.... My friend works in Sarah's undergraduate lab. She explained to me that the senior graduate student had worked closely with Sarah. That student said that Sarah only brought drama. Sarah accused the student of stealing her ideas and would go crying to the PI and complain about the grad student. Sound familiar? I emailed Veronica and told her that I believed Sarah to be a sick individual that uses emotional outbursts to manipulate people into taking her side. I asked that she try to logically review what happened in the lab. I hope that this can protect the newest member of that lab. What now? I have no freaking idea. I am a person who always has a plan and ten back up plans. I haven't been plan-less since high school. I'm healing now. I'm browsing research assistant positions in other labs (at different universities). I sincerely hope that the PI doesn't prevent me from moving forward in this career path. I have a lot of other amazing scientists in my corner, so letter's of rec will not be a problem at all. Who knows, maybe you will see a happy update from me down the road.

My slides are not really usable. I plan to resign from the lab.

Nothing else has happened since my 8/9/16 update. Sarah has been eerily nice to me while Veronica has ignored me. I will run the lab work on the dusty slides this week. My PI has been out of town for the past two weeks.

Thanks. I agree. The lab is toxic and was toxic before I started, as is evidenced from multiple stories I tried to ignore. Its so disheartening, because I would have the potential to do great things here if allowed to. Not speaking to anyone about it wasn't really an option, and I could have never known that things would escalate like this or that I would ever have these suspicions. I only went to Veronica and John to make sure it wasn't an issue I was having. When they confirmed the same feelings it was an awful blow. When I was told that I shouldn't talk about the goings ons in my lab it was an attempt to isolate me, which is text book abuse. "Keeping it in the family", if you will. I really think the greater concern is why a first year was made to feel like this in the first place. It really doesn't matter either way, I regret joining this lab every day. I doubt I will continue in this career path if I drop out.

Things have certainly escalated: I wrote the original post while attending an academic conference. At this conference, I was able to avoid rooming with my lab mates and room with some very close science friends. My entire lab from my MS attended the conference, as well a some friends from my BS. I was surrounded by many friends and scientists who like and respect me. I had discussed all of my problems with my previous lab mates, as we all talk weekly. They saw me go from, "these girls are weird" to "I don't think they like me" to "something weird is going on" to "I think Sarah could be messing with my stuff" to "She is messing with my stuff", a natural progression of a toxic/abusive lab environment (as I am finding out through researching this awful predicament). I was cordial to Sarah throughout the conference, but spent the majority of my time attending seminars and catching up with old friends. I received and email on the last day of the conference from my boss: "Since things in lab have clearly not improved and seem to have escalated, I'd like to have a group meeting tomorrow to discuss these issues. Please come prepared to discuss the issues, what you have done in the last couple of weeks to make things better, and your solutions for moving forward. This childish and counterproductive behavior needs to stop now! this meeting is mandatory - tomorrow (Monday) at 10:30am in my office." I was confused. I texted Veronica, "Have I been inappropriate, what's going on?". She responded, "I would have guessed that your friend Jill would have told you what she has been doing to Sarah all conference." I talked to Jill, who said that she had three interactions with Sarah. This kind of made me mad, because they were instructed to avoid her at all costs. Jill is a New Yorker and can come across as a little harsh at times. She explained she wasn't happy to meet the girl, but couldn't think of what would warrant an emergency lab meeting. I was very nervous. At this point it became clear to me that I was dealing with someone who is mentally unstable and driven by fear and paranoia. I'm sure she did run into my friends, as I have many of them that were in attendance at this conference. I'm sure they were less than happy to meet her. I think this prompted a response to situations that were in reality non-issues, but were escalated in her head. Regardless, I am not capable of controlling the actions of other people. I most certainly wouldn't want to cause more problems for myself in this lab. I felt pushed against a wall, I sent this email in response (**** for some degree of anonymity): "I will be happy to meet and discuss. I'm not entirely sure what this is about. I'm hoping that this is some sort of misunderstanding, as my recent interactions with Sarah have been friendly. I do think that I need to meet with you privately again as well. I have debated for months about coming to you. I think that since we are fact driven people the best thing for me to do is present you with the facts. I am hoping that this will shed some light on why I came to you last month. 1. My first **** worked. It had ****, but the ***** quality was very poor. I was told by Sarah that it looked better than she had ever gotten it to work. 2. After that first run, my other **** did not work. Even after trouble-shooting. 3. I felt like I was being hovered over by Sarah in the lab, as I told you when we met. 4. I talked to Veronica to express my frustrations. I told her "I hope that I'm wrong, I know this can't be the case, but is there any way Sarah could be messing with my stuff?" She said, "I wish I could dispell that completely, but you aren't the only person who has thought this. There has been no proof of it." 5. When things did not get better. I mentioned the same thing to John. He said he hadn't told anyone about this, but he had thought that Sarah was messing with his lab work as well. This was when his **** results were inconclusive. John said he hid his reagents and then had a successful run. 6. I didn't run an **** when Sarah was out of town in January. Sarah convinced me not to run one when she went to ****, telling me that I needed to "step away from it for a while." 7. Sarah went out of town for another conference in June. I ran an ****. It worked and has worked since. I understand this is all circumstantial which is why I did not present it to you when we spoke last. But I now feel like I need to protect myself. That being said, I hope that this is not the case. Despite these events, I have made every effort to be cordial and professional with Sarah since I came to you in May. I am looking to you for guidance, ****" I received no response. The next morning, I sat down in a room where everyone was against me (PI, Sarah, and now Veronica). The first thing that my PI said was, "Is anyone here sabotaging or has sabotaged anyone else's work. No? No? No? OK, good. We can forget that completely. It looks like you want to say something?". I explained my case. Veronica made it seem like she told me that it was just "where she was in her research" when she thought that. I was told that "things just happen in research" and that "we all get frustrated at times". I was told how inappropriate it was to talk to anyone about my suspicions. I was told it was inappropriate to talk to John or anyone else at my university. I was mobbed by everyone in my lab. They asked me how and why I think that could happen, I kept my mouth shut even though I had a very good idea of how and why all of this would be happening. Sarah was in control of everyone. She was manipulating their ability to see this situation for was it was. She said that my friend grabbed her and screamed at her in a crowded room. She said she feared for her physical safety. Jill, who I trust above most people, denies this completely. Sarah said that she didn't come to me, because it would likely get physical. She said that everyone at the conference seemed to know, including he president (who I definitely hadn't told, but am very close with). After all of these months of torturing me, she was playing the victim. I wasn't able to speak my side fully because I was being bombarded from every corner. Here are some great links to bullying and mobbing behavior: http://bullyonline.org/old/workbully/mobbing.htm http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/12/28/bullying-at-work-workplace-mobbing-is-on-the-rise/ http://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/when-bullying-turns-into-mobbing-everyone-in-the-workplace-loses/ Here are some great links to dealing with someone with borderline personality disorder in the workplace: http://www.borderline-personality-disorder.com/relationships/employee-or-coworker/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-w-berman-md/9-tips-on-how-to-recogniz_b_5224432.html The parallels to my situation are eery and scary. Jill sent a letter to my PI. My PI said that it was obvious someone wasn't being completely honest. Two weeks went by and they were creepily nice to me. Treating me like a bomb that could go off at any second. I can't focus on my work. I feel like such injustice was served and that I would never be in control of my own research or relationship with my PI. I started to see a counselor at my school. She agrees that I am dealing with a very sick person and that the perception of reality in my lab is so warped that it is an unsafe environment. She is wonderful and is helping a lot. Until yesterday... I was putting my specimens away in our freezer. We recently moved from a -80ºC to a -20ºC freezer, because our -80ºC shorted out. The specimens are fine to be stored at -20ºC and had been in that freezer all last week. Each project I have has a separate box that is in a separate bag. The last time I had opened these boxes was on Friday (two days prior). I opened the boxes and there was a clear/gritty powdery substance all of my specimens. I opened another box and they had the same thing. Three boxes, all of my major projects all had powder covering them. No one else's boxes were effected. This happened over the weekend when, you guessed it, only Sarah was working. I have had issue with specimen quality, and when troubleshooting a month ago I explained to my PI that the specimens that sat in the freezer for longer seemed to look worse. It didn't make sense, because they should be able to sit for years. It kind of does now. I'm fairly certain, that this has been going on for a while and that the move to a higher temperature made it more evident. Email sent to my PI: "I just wanted to pass this along to you. There was some weird gritty powder all of my specimens in the -20ºC this morning. They were sealed in boxes in separate bags. I passed it along to Veronica and Sarah to make sure that they checked their slides as well. So far, it looks like my slides are the only ones effected. I think it will just wash off, I will know if it effects any of the lab work next week. Just wanted to tell you so that you could check your specimens when you get back in town. It almost looks like salt or ground up desiccant. Let me know if you have any idea what could cause this, so that I can prevent it in the future." Response: "ok, thanks for letting me know. looks like it could be desicant dust. you might want to give those slides a few dips in **** before you start **** with them to see if you can wash it off." Its amazing that everything can be explained away by a magical coincidence in a scientific laboratory. I'm at wits end. I don't know how much more abuse I can take here. I'm mostly posting here to protect myself and keep (yet another) paper trail. Any opinions will be very appreciated.

I have had issues with my lab-mate since I began my PhD work last August. I entered the program with a MS. I have to keep the details vague due to the immensity of this situation. I joined a lab of two other graduate students, let’s call them Sarah and Veronica. I entered the lab at the same time as a lab tech, John. When I interviewed for the lab I sensed that something was off with the graduate student dynamic. Which, in hindsight, should have been a red flag. Sarah became the person that my PI wanted me to work with. Our research areas overlapped and she was a very smart, productive student. I was even placed on a side-project with her. It soon became evident that she was a very controlling/micromanaging person. She works seven days a week and is always in lab. This personality type is very common in the sciences, so I wasn’t immediately put off. I did however have problems with how she talked about people. She held no trust for anything that anyone did. She ridiculed the skill set and work ethic of others constantly. She was also very close with my advisor. She was deemed that she was the only person in lab that was allowed to mix solutions. She was also the only person in lab training John and myself, even though Veronica is the most senior student. John was placed on a project using techniques that only Sarah uses. He had previous experience with these techniques. His results showed consistent, unexplainable contamination. He spent many weeks troubleshooting this work and eventually had one successful run. He was then taken off of the project, because of the failed attempts. I worked on a protocol that takes three days to complete where my materials must sit out in lab for three days. The first time that Sarah trained me my results were, “better than she had ever gotten them to work”. I then spent months trying to replicate them. Each time I would run this work I would get weak to no signal in the results. I knew that I was following the protocol. Other people weren’t having any issues, including undergrads. I even ran at the same time as Sarah using all of the same materials. Still the same result of nothing happened. Each week I went to my PI with zero data. I am not uncomfortable with laboratory procedures and didn’t have any problems with them during my masters. I optimized an old protocol of Sarah’s (tweaking concentrations) and began another type of lab work. It was working with beautiful results. Sarah began to hover over me. She began to go through my notebook every time I turned my back. She was monitoring me and tattling to my advisor about solution volumes and concentrations. She told me that my methodology was completely inconsistent. I asked her why she thought that, because I knew that I was doing everything in my power to reduce variation. She was talking about a run from 1.5 months prior in which one of my 5’s looked slightly like a 3. It had been consistent. It seemed she was looking for problems. This is when I started to think that she may be sabotaging my lab work. I talked to Veronica. I told her that I couldn’t breathe in lab and that her level of micromanagement was not appropriate. I then told her that I felt crazy, but I was starting to think she could be sabotaging me. Veronica’s face dropped and she said, “I wish I could dispel that completely. There is no proof, but other’s have felt this way as well.” She explained that her and a previous lab mate had thought that. I was terrified at this point. Things escalated with her and I was very paranoid. I talked to John and said the same thing, “I feel crazy, I feel like she is messing with my stuff.” He then told me that he had thought the same thing. He said that he put out decoy reagents and hid his reagents. That was when he had the one successful run. This fact only furthered my suspicions. I waited for her to go out of town for a conference and performed the protocol that had not worked for me since the very first run. It worked. I didn’t do anything differently. I had spent over 300 hours and thousands of grant money troubleshooting this. It worked. When she came back, she was very off. She spent three hours in my advisors office having what Veronica said was an existential crisis. Veronica claimed that Sarah said, “If science is going to make me a bad person, I think I should quit.” I have now had two more successful runs. Now I am at a crossroads. I think she will back off, but I can’t be certain. I now have complete disdain for Sarah, yet have to see her everyday. I can’t talk about it to my PI, because it is such a bold accusation without concrete proof. This could result in funding being pulled or affect my PI’s tenure. I also believe it be a disservice to the scientific community as a whole to let an individual like this continue. At this point, all I can do is get past it or provide evidence. I can’t focus to write or read. If anyone can give me advice I would be very gracious to hear it. Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.