After a prolonged silence of five and half years since leaving Berkeley Lab, during which I have taken the time to physically and psychologically heal from those experiences, I am recounting the story that is essentially an indicator of the push-downs and corruptions in academic research labs of our times. For the last few years I have fought quietly against the practices at Berkeley Lab, trying first to help bring positive change. I reported my experience to the Director’s office in detail in January 2016 – that’s about four years ago – (and then to the inspector general’s hotline at DoE in July 2016), but Lab’s investigation kept supporting the abuser and threatened me to remain silent. I have the investigation report in the form of a four-page letter to me, and it is ridiculous.
The dark world of meritocracy is a black-box to the public, and so are its abuses. The details here unmasks how that system works, and its many ugly loopholes that an abused has to travel through, in addition to the burden of the trauma incurred. Some examples of the closed nature of the system are: necessity for professionally supporting each other with letters throughout careers, recommendations for jobs and grants and awards, and plain-old word-of-mouth references behind your back that is the go-to modus operando that compels that no one speaks out.
This story is my head-on experience with routine credit thefts, underhanded manipulations, exploitations and gender harassments that happen to early-career researchers ever-so-subtly, and how that derails academic careers. In that light, I think this story needs to be told non-anonymously. And because the experiences were so subtle at times, the detailed description is necessary to estimate the profoundness of its collective.
Past eight years have been tough on me: since joining Berkeley Lab in May 2011, and since leaving it in July 2014. Berkeley Lab (also called Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, or LBL or LBNL or Lab) is a federally funded national lab, primarily funded by the Department of Energy (DoE).
At the time of my leaving, I had already started suffering the harmful consequences of bullying, exploitation and manipulation by my then-supervisor Ron Zuckermann (RZ). He’s a Senior Scientist (chemist) at Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and Molecular Foundry. I complained to Berkeley Lab about him in January 2016. He has recently stepped down as the Director of Facilities of the Biological Nanostructures Facility at Molecular Foundry (MF is a national and federally-funded User Facility program within LBL. Foundry is also a part of the National User Facility. For details on what comprises National User Facilities, check this site for facilities within Berkeley Lab, and this site for facilities nationwide in USA).
Bullying is largely unreported and unpunished in academia. Post-GeoffMarcy and after that BuzzFeed story in 2015, especially around the geographic location of Berkeley, we have all been talking for a while now, about the fact that long-term and extreme sexual harassment in academic scientific world is a systemic problem. As of 2019, and with last year’s NASEM report (by National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine), we are just beginning to understand the scale, form and scope of the problem of gender harassment. However, the subtle forms of harassment are still largely unexamined. Microaggression-infused bullying is very subtle but has far reaching harmful effects on the targets.
Because of the extremely closed nature of the system, and it being a small clear-cut world as a meritocratic community, most stories from academia have been short or anonymous, bearing almost no indication of its sufferers’ deep wounds.
The idiosyncratic method of infliction of these wounds is of special importance, as is the subtlety with which these are usually delivered: the mind games of crafty minds. The devil is in the details of that game, its system-wheel, which smoothly sublimates up to snowball into all the ways abuse is normalized by the school/institute administrations and the larger scientific community. This, we need to know as a society if we are to design effective remedies, policies, legislations and ultimately laws to safeguard our future scholastic citizens, or — God forbid — stop sending our kids towards academic pathways without a good dose of what’s forthcoming.
Usually when we read the reports or statistics of various kinds of bullying and microaggressive harassments within the academic context, the experiences of sufferers are mainly summified into a few short sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes anonymity is a necessity, understandably to protect the whistleblowers. But as a result very little is publicly known about the types of academic abuses and wrong uses of powers, especially the subtle ones. I hope that this temporally non-linear story provides the general public with some glimpses into the politics of the scientific world encapsulated into those few sentences, unzipped.
So here goes the details of death by a thousand paper-cuts.
In May 2011, I joined Berkeley Lab as an intern at the Zuckermann-lab to work on computational model for peptoids for the summer, but the plan took a different turn. (I had also been to Berkeley Lab before that as an intern, in the summer of 2009, but that is not relevant for this story.)
From the continuation of my PhD work at Virginia Tech and my MS at LSU, I had already conceived the idea and design of Peppytide in my mind and had made some paper/wood prototypes, before I joined Lab in May 2011. So when asked about my short-term dream and vision early on, I told RZ about it in one of those early meetings. It was an odd project and vision, isolated from RZ’s usual peptoid research direction, but he said he had funds to support risky projects and would support mine as its uniqueness had piqued his interest. So at Berkeley my implementation was immediate, resulting in submission of an ROI invention to Berkeley Lab at the end of summer 2011 (I have documents and dates). I got a tiny raise too within that short period. Because of the progress, RZ offered to extend my internship till December 2011 to continue with building Peppytides.
Then again in late-Fall, I was offered a full-time research position at his lab. Consequently in Jan 2012, I accepted a full time term-employee position as a Research Associate to continue my work because it was going so well (I have the offer letter). I went through a full cycle of applying for a call for the job application and getting an offer during Fall 2011, which I understood was based on merit and uniqueness of my research work.
Till that time, there was no 3D printer at Molecular Foundry. Prof. Joe DeRisi at UCSF, whom RZ had introduced to me that summer (and later bragged about that introduction), very kindly let me use his lab and the exciting printers in his lab from May through December to print out my experiments. He also kindly accepted to be in my doctoral committee, and I am so thankful for his support and excitement for my work.
My full-time employment at Berkeley Lab started in Jan 2012, and soon I got the money allocated from RZ’s research fund to buy a 3D printer and other tools I needed. Because I was building a new direction of study from scratch, I wrote small grants and proposals to try to support my work from the outset. At that stage, I was too naïve to recognize the tale-tell signs of credit shift and theft, and was too engrossed in my research to think about these worldly things. I had this classic mentality of a lone scientist working away in her corner in lab and if all went well she would prevail. Needless to say, I added RZ’s name in everything I did.
In early 2012, at one point I had planned to submit an NSF grant, wrote some portions, and was looking for eligible collaborating groups. After a while, out of the blue RZ informed me that he was submitting a grant proposal to NSF with three other external collaborators to work on this topic! I was instructed to write a portion of it. Based on discussions, I thought that I would be included. He had also used text from my write-ups and my manuscript-in-preparation (that was ultimately published in PNAS in 2013) in the proposal. When I asked for a copy of the submitted proposal from RZ, he did not respond. I never got a copy of the final submission, which I consider to be very unfair. Maybe NSF can send me a copy of that grant proposal from which I was forcibly excluded?
When I emailed RZ to include me officially as one of the investigators, he did not respond immediately, and later came over to my desk to say that he would not include me as an investigator as “I was a lab member.” The proposal was ultimately rejected, but it shows the intention of exclusion that was forthcoming.
As a sidenote, NSF requires naming and acknowledging of authors other than PIs and co-PIs. Even if I was not to be a PI or co-PI (based on the grounds that I was not a “luminary” as per their argument), I could have been included as other type of investigators, for example, Senior Investigator. It was totally RZ’s fault that my name was not included in the submission. He was basically taking my idea and proposing it, and hiding the proposal from me. In fact, it should have been me instead of him in that submission. From NSF website:
“Authors other than the PI (or any co-PI) should be named and acknowledged. Serious failure to adhere to such standards can result in findings of research misconduct.” (Source: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf14001/gpg_1.jsp#ID3)
RZ’s next exclusion was trickier. In Nov 2012, I wrote and submitted an industry grant proposal by myself for a small fund to support myself (I have submission email). I went to the long interview as well. It eventually got funded, and I was supposed to get officially supported with it from Dec 2013 to end of 2014. However, somewhere down the line of paperwork, I was removed from the email loop without my knowledge or consent, and oddly RZ was designated as the only PI. As per my submission, I was expecting to be a part of it as the co-PI/co-investigator. I didn’t know of the decision one year later as I was purposefully and silently cut off from the email loop, and I strangely came to know about the decision from the group mailing-list email by RZ dated Nov 20, 2013, 3:39 PM addressed to everyone including the then-Molecular Foundry Director Jeff Neaton, parts of which was:
“I am very happy to report that we finally executed a deal … today … to further develop the Peppytide protein models … for 1 year … that will primarily be used to pay Promita’s salary … This is a pretty unusual opportunity …”
(I have the email). Funnily, RZ had forgotten to mention in the email that the funding was mine. The following clauses were misleading and ambiguous: “will primarily be used to pay Promita’s salary.” Instead of saying that Promita was the (hidden) investigator and submitter of the proposal, the reader can see how the email was cleverly worded to obscure my contribution, which was to soon become a repeat offense in every possible channel of communication. The “we” in the email refers to me. But I was still not experienced enough to catch these signs as big problems. I gave him the benefit of doubt that this was totally unintentional and that he meant no harm to me, and that when time comes he would support me. Didn’t happen like that.
Halfway through the funding cycle (mid-2014), RZ asked me to leave the Lab for “lack-of-funding” grounds.
He also tried preventing me from mentioning the funding in my CV (I have the email).
Next exclusion. I also submitted another small project proposal for industry funding. When it was awarded to me I was not in the email loop because RZ slowly and deliberately isolated me from all related emails after the submission. He decided by himself to refuse my opportunities on my behalf behind my back. Berkeley Lab’s excuse provided for this behavior was: because “you were not eligible to receive funds … as an IDEA Studio Scholar because you would have had to receive the funds as an individual and the Lab could not have accepted them.” (quoting from Berkeley Lab’s letter to me in 2016).
Summarizing the matter, RZ did not let me be the IDEA Studio Scholar grant awardee and to accept the funds as an individual because then he would have been unable to control me and my funds. He didn’t even bother to discuss this with me. He just told me the status after he had said no to them and the matter was officially closed. As I was strategically cut off the email loop (by RZ and LBL officials) after the proposal submission , I was at a disadvantage regarding notifications, communications and decisions.
The annual performance reviews of employees were interesting. (LBL does not do performance reviews of students, but just the employees. As I was an employee, I had annual performance reviews) One year, I was told that he could not give me an “outstanding” but only a “very good” because he needs to limit the quota to 5%, and he said that he should pick the people that ultimately benefit him. The previous year, he had given me “outstanding” but was not happy when the HR pressed for a raise because of that.
I was asked to leave the job on performance and lack-of-fund grounds, but performance and feedback system is pretty messed up at Berkeley Lab.
Women are habituated to give undeserved credit to others and I was no exception. I was sharing my accomplishments with him with open arms. I was very naïve and did not understand that this generosity and politeness would ultimately be used against me. Generously, I had also worked hard to put him in my PhD committee across the country at Virginia Tech. He was external, I didn’t need to, grad school would have been happier minus the extra paperwork and complications, and I would be relieved later letter-wise (it is easy for future employers to check online who was in your committee and in what order, who was the chair etc. and then they proudly cold-call).
When I defended my PhD dissertation at Virginia Tech in March 2014 (I flew down there to defend), I was still incapable of thinking that someone could be so harmful and deceptive. Our conversation right after the defense seemed to be okay with a little bit of “we”, but still with a little bit of residual “you”. I felt so indebted that he gave me independence and resources to carve out my dream project. My email of gratitude:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014:
“I just wanted to thank you for being with me and mentoring me all these years. It has been a great experience with great memories. Also, thanks for giving me all the independence which I thrived on.”
His response:
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014:
Hi Promita,
You are very welcome. We seized an opportunity to make history together! It was a bold thing to do. I’m very impressed with the faith you’ve had in the project all the way along. You have always truly believed in the project, and you made something spectacular with it. I am really proud of you and am really happy about our accomplishments overall. Neither of us could have done this by ourselves! I’d say we had a major impact in a short amount of time! This does not happen very often so it is a very special thing. I am glad I got to share it with you. I know we both learned a ton of extremely valuable things! Plus, I think we were an effective team and worked well together. It has been a pleasure.
Let’s definitely celebrate when you come back. We will have a floor party of some kind for sure. I’d also like to take you out to lunch or dinner sometime soon.
Cheers!
-Ron
Things started to get clearer in a bad way soon after I returned from my Virginia trip when he started to leave his happy-veneer and became openly mean, when he repeatedly asked me to transfer my patent rights to him, when he started insisting that I should quit a scientific career, when he asked me to leave the Lab. It was a wake-up call. This was surprising because I still had nine months of employment left in my term appointment letter – till Dec 2014 – and I had worked hard on grants and job applications plans based on that timeline. Plus I had my existing grant funding till end of year too.
To make sense of his behavior, I went back to my old emails and put two-and-two together and all the double-meaning ambiguous sentences came alive. For the first time in almost 3 years, omissions and exclusions started to make sense into the big picture of his misdoings. It dawned on me that the prior omissions were not just unintended careless omissions or harmless credit-mongering, but were planned meticulously to inflict harm. It seemed everything bad was happening all at once, along with my sudden enlightenment. I had been slowly and silently marginalized and he had taken centerstage in my work, and was now trying with all his power to make me give up my career. I thought that he had believed in me and took risks with a new project. However, it dawned on me that he was just using me to get to my work. He was thinking of me as low-pay wager to be thrown out when done with using my capability. Mid-May, June and July of 2014 was my realization time, with bullying getting worse with each passing day.
Then there was my Molecular Foundry user proposal where things got sneaky. After I finished my PhD in March, I was thinking to delve into some details of the model, thinking I still had 9 more months of the above funding and appointment. So I thought that I had ample time to do a little research exploration and to look for a suitable job. RZ had come to know about my grant proposal idea beforehand and pushed me to submit an internal Foundry User Proposal first, which I did (end of March). Much later I realized that this was his strategy to bring his name in (and throw me out of it).
As I said above, Molecular Foundry is a National User Facility (that runs on US Department of Energy funding) that takes pride in the achievements and resource-usage of external or internal users who come to use the Foundry scientific resources and equipment from all over the world. Foundry receives federal funding to make resources available to all accepted proposals, and at that time had around $25 million of allotted federal annual funding.
I submitted a Foundry proposal to use some of those resources. I hope the submission records exist for quick fact-checking (I have screenshots and documents too). The proposal got the highest review rating amongst all submitted proposals in that cycle (the reviewers for user proposals are usually from Berkeley Lab / UC Berkeley, and are experts in their domains). At submission time, RZ misguided me into putting his name down as the PI saying that as he was the Facility Director of Molecular Foundry and runs the lab, all proposals submitted to the Foundry should have his name as the PI by default, and that I should put myself as the ‘Primary Researcher’ because this is primarily my work. A day after I was back from my dissertation defense trip, my epiphany was yet to happen, so I did as told about including him. I later found out that what he said was not true: one could definitely submit as a sole PI of a proposal. Upon acceptance of the proposal, I requested if he could please transfer the PI-responsibility to me so that I could continue my next-step ideas. He refused, and would not even make me a co-PI, saying, “You want letters, don’t you?” and, “I am the PI” yet again. “Maybe next time,” he said. But such next-times never arrived. It was hard to focus on work with that much bullying.
Soon after, I was pushed out of the proposal. He exploited and abused his power as the Biological Nanostructures [User] Facility Director to exclude me from my own submission. Based on this power, he just logged in into my proposal account, changed my info, and added people as he saw fit with his “am the PI” logic. He also reminded me again that he was well connected enough to end my career, if I argued. I was denied access to my own project and facilities. RZ had successfully bullied me out of it.
Because my dissertation got rave acclaim from my committee during my defense, it got RZ’s attention. Because the user proposal got top reviews, it got RZ’s attention. He wanted to snatch it away from me and take all the credit.
Surprise. Out of the blue, RZ said that two people – JM and a high-school intern – were arriving soon to join the project and I would be supervising them.
I was asked to train them. I came to know that, much before JM arrived from Europe, without my permission RZ had officially added JM to my user proposal to work on the ideas laid down by me and supervised by me – but actually it was a ploy to silently replace and hush me. The people-list in my proposal after RZ’s bullying edits is this:
Note the “Ms”.
RZ did another funny thing regarding my user proposal, I later came to know. It seems he had planned well. Much before JM’s arrival, he had emailed my unsubmitted proposal, my then-unpublished (unfinished) dissertation and my undisclosed faculty-job Research Statement to JM before user proposal submission deadline without my permission or knowledge. So JM submitted a very similar user proposal! (I have a copy). JM’s proposal got rejected [words were around that I am the Lead in this work because: (1) I had received the Best Poster Award the year before, (2) The Spot Recognition Award months before, (3) being shortlisted for the next Director’s Award], but RZ used his PI-power in my proposal to add JM to mine as seen in the above screenshot, and I was thrown out of my project. So ironically, it would have been the same outcome if JM’s proposal had gotten accepted and mine rejected. If brute force is how it works, then what’s the point of a review process? This is an example of how overt discrimination thrives in academia and is supported by hierarchy, bureaucracy and power. I hear that there were some arguments in the committee about this, but no one spoke out loud enough and RZ won.
RZ didn’t bother to take my permission before giving my write-ups to outsiders because he thought he would get away with it. This was very disrespectful and inappropriate.
Anyway, JM arrived in late-May and RZ was pressing me to “teach him everything”. My years-long project was taken from me and given to this newcomer non-expert whom I then trained and who then treated me like an expendable little nameless student that was getting chucked because of bad performance. It was insulting. JM’s attitude was this high-and-mighty man who had taken over, and with RZ’s encouragement of this behavior. In a lab-wide meeting a couple of days after joining the lab, JM claimed my next model-version (PeppyChain) to be his work – “I did it,” JM literally said in the group meeting with a model in hand provided by me. RZ was present but did not object or clarify, just kept smiling and nodding. JM’s assigned job was to form a group, I heard from him. His proposals had articulated similar sentiments: “The applicant wishes to drive the formation and development of the Peppytide research group, with postgraduate students and researchers undertaking research at the cutting edge of digital development and biological science.”
Not to mention that JM had a habit of coming within 6 inches of my face while having a conversation, and touching my hand and back while talking. Once he came and sat very close to me and wouldn’t leave saying that he was learning by watching me work at the computer. I had to stop working, and fold arms. Then he left, then I started working and he came back. I waited until he left for the day at 5pm before continuing with my work and had to work long hours of night. There were times, when in the middle of a discussion he would come so close that I would back out a few inches to keep distance, and then he would proceed a few inches more towards me – thus we would cover across the room through the entire hallway between cubicles in 15 minutes of conversation about the next steps, with me stepping slowly backwards while talking, just to avoid bumping into him.
Also quoting from his proposal, “Furthermore, the applicant expects to capitalize on the latest efforts from the ongoing collaboration with Dr. Zuckermann’s group …” – I was already labeled here as the nameless faceless “Dr. Zuckermann’s group”.
I heard that RZ gave him recommendation letters for these proposal submissions even before they started working together, a pointer that they had planned it together to displace me. An excerpt from JM’s proposal:
“With the expert training and opportunities in place at the Molecular Foundry, the user facility award of this fellowship will build upon the successful start of his academic career and deliver him to a full time academic position. The unique set of expertise in structural/computational biology, augmented reality and experience in model building and protein mimicry bring by both the applicant (Please see attached CV) and its key collaborator (Dr. Zuckermann, Molecular Foundry, LBL, UC at Berkeley) is critical for this project.” [sic]
It looks like in this unsuccessful proposal JM was the PI and RZ was the “key collaborator” using my work, ideas, proposals and texts without my permission or mention.
Here are some sentences and ideas from JM’s proposals that were taken right out of my undisclosed write-ups, proposals, Research statement and the then-published paper, with no citation or mention of me:
- “Further long-term objectives … Physical interactivity with computer databases is a promising area for the development of new protein structures (e.g new drugs) and the exploration of novel protein folding pathways for basic research.” – copied.
- “In the future, sensor, actuator and microprocessor control could also be incorporated to create a more realistic, user‐friendly input/interaction device for the Peppytide Technology. One application might be to make Peppytide “display” the folding pathway as a function of time, given the ability to self-fold through actuators.” – copied from paper.
- “There is a strong need for scaled, realistically foldable, but inexpensive, physical models to go hand-in-hand with the AR and other computer interfaces, while concomitantly taking better advantage of current computational capabilities.” – copied verbatim.
- “This research proposal outlines a new technique capable of manipulating biomolecules (e.g. peptide). … The proposed technique will involve synthesizing peppytides to contain magnetic and optical properties, that will then be analyzed under different configurations.” – copied.
- “It should also be possible to create a model with assignable and distinct bond angles for each backbone dihedral angle which would bias them to fold into a predetermined structure (e.g incorporation of new magnetic connections/field or “ball-lock” like mechanism)” – I had discussed only in 1:1 meetings with RZ the design details on whiteboard. The plan was forming in my mind, so there was no writeup about it yet. Isn’t it strange that it would show up in JM’s proposal?
- “At the end of the integration period the applicant will have also identified commercial collaborators. A possible spin off venture should emerge in the future.” – This was in bold letters. RZ also mentioned to me in conversation and email later that some investors were showing interest, but he did not connect me with any investor, nor include me in any of those discussions with JM or any investor.
- “A first step is to expand to the full set of amino acid side chains, so that a complete protein tertiary structure can be folded. Other potential improvements would be the use of softer materials, and to include representations of electrostatic or hydrophobic forces. It should also be possible to create a model with assignable and distinct bond angles for each backbone dihedral angle, which would bias them to fold into a predetermined structure.” – my user proposal submitted at the same time proposed this too! Exact identical proposal as mine, but a crappy non-expert version. This is a truly unacceptable conduct by RZ to have sent my write-ups to this guy, and then supporting his submission with a reference letter.
It is clear that RZ had emailed my writings out to JM without my permission even before I knew of the latter’s existence.
Anyway, by late-May 2014, the discrimination, push-down and bullying was paramount. There was no winning this game for me. The better I performed, the more RZ oppressed me with his power. Soon he started insulting me and constantly questioning my scientific capability, knowledge and skill.
JM used my text to submit not only his user proposal mentioned above, but also to submit an industry grant (same grant, same company) so that he could replace me soon in that as well, which he did. This is a strange, secret, underhanded thing that RZ did to discriminate me and to displace me from my own project. I have a copy of both of JM’s proposals that are strewn with sentences copied verbatim from mine, and ideas taken from mine, but without citing me even once.
Strangely, I had the notion that plagiarism is not acceptable in this country and in top national labs. I witnessed that a person with enough power can do anything and get away with it.
It is appalling that there was a “Letter of support (Dr. Zuckermann)” included with JM’s proposals even before he joined, while RZ refused to provide me letters even after I had worked for 3+ years. Does that letter and submitted proposal exist in submission records of Foundry User Proposal Submission so that a fact-check could be done? Could we look at it please?
It is weird that RZ refused to provide me job letters saying, “this work is not science”, but wrote letters to support this guy’s multiple proposals who was to join the lab as a “Visiting Scientist” (so my guess is that his letter to JM did not have phrases like “this work is not science”). Very very strange case of privilege, and such a strange way of discriminating. JM’s proposal further stated “There is no conflict of interest associated with this proposal.” In short, this whole thing was a well-planned joint effort between those two.
Then there were the efforts to convince me to quit science that was a whole different ball game. RZ mentioned too often that I said I was interested in education with peppytides. He used this to downplay and inhibit my interest to continue with my research. This was a strategic move.
It is conducive to the myth that women do education and aesthetics related stuff while men do scientific brainy research – that women are good with people and not with objects. A number of things go against me here – women are not thought to possess inventor astuteness, mechanical acumen and 3-dimensional spatial understanding. RZ was not merely saying, but pushing it onto me until I accept and quit the career. Every time he would ask how my career plan was going and I responded, it would inevitably end with yet another session on “other options” or a reminding that he would not provide letters if I disobeyed him. Eventually I had to stop communicating with him in 2015 to end this disturbing cycle.
When I didn’t get convinced to quit science, RZ took matters into his own hands by making me invisible. How he did that is the story that is coming.