It’s now December of 2019. Like ink slowly in water, my story is spreading all across the world. My voice! It has been a little more than a week since I posted Part1 the day before Thanksgiving Day. As I hear back from some of you, something is unwinding deep inside the healant in me. The unsilenced voice that was incarcerated for so long, now stretches out like tiger and jumps out of bed. It’s a good day. It was a good week, though it was pretty rainy here at Palo Alto. I am stalling. Let’s start.
Someone had said that my work at Molecular Foundry was quite known. A lot of people remember me from back then, from back there, and had wondered where I had disappeared to afterwards (especially in the news). Now it all comes full circle, with aha. But one shouldn’t have had to be great to speak out. The reason one cannot speak out is, it is so easy to put you down with just one sentence: You are not meritorious. Who decides? The reason I can dare to speak out is … I don’t know what, I am at a loss for words. The point is that any average person on an average day in the scientific research world should be able to speak up and be heard without IQ-shaming compelled by the echo-chamber of the intellectual hierarchy and community. It’s a tool to the abusive! Any scientist should be able to have a career. Proof of award, renown, press and recognition, should not have to be a requirement for that. The day this relentless barbaric undertone of a hint of weighing your brain-mass could be considered slanderous, would be a magnificent day. Today is not that day.
Capitol Hill trip and Junes
Every year a team of scientists, representing Berkeley Lab User Facilities, go to Capitol Hill to present their work and talk to Congress. One person from each facility is chosen to make a team or a ‘contingent’. That year I was selected to represent Molecular Foundry to go and talk about my work at the Hill because of my stellar research work. Molecular Foundry knows me and my work very well.
It was a 2-day event in June of 2014. Washington DC was exciting. That trip was a great experience. We also had a booth at the National User Expo at the Rayburn House where I showed off my models. We mingled with scientists from other national labs as well.
It was also great to take a tour around and to learn more of the history of the
country’s past leaders. I am glad I went. For me it was an antipodal world to
see and experience.
You can check out LBL’s press coverage on this here (Lab Contingent Raises User Facility Awareness on Capitol Hill), plus our group photo with Congressman Jerry McNerney. We visited Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office. We ate in the café at lunchtime alongside a roomful of congressmen, congresswomen and staff. The team was great, we made friends, we had fun.
Back to Berkeley, it became apparent RZ was not happy that I was selected. He made efforts to come and say that it was not an important trip and that there was nothing important to say, otherwise he would have gone. Somehow it was a thorn to him, I did not quite understand why.
By that time, one could see in the photo that I had started to put on immense weight due to the stress and daily insult. Compare that with this photo that was taken in July 2011, a month and half after I had joined LBL. In next three Junes, I had gained that much.
The June before that June – 2013 – I took about three weeks off for a trip. It was also the time when I was just sending off the final version of my paper after addressing reviewer comments. The place that I was to visit had been having a little bit of unrest for a while, and so had less tourists visiting. The evening before I was gone for the trip, RZ came over to my desk and said that I should upload everything before I go that day, so that if anything happened to me and I did not return, at least the paper would be published. He said that it was an important paper in his career after the 1992 peptoid paper and so he needed to cover all grounds. He was all smiles. Then he was gone and I was alone in the entire floor, working for hours, to finish off before leaving.
I would go on to gain a total of fifty pounds until the May/June of 2018. 2019 has been some respite and big-time recovery time.
Award and July
Now about that Director’s Award.
Berkeley Lab’s Director’s Award for Exceptional Achievement is an annual affair with the following mission (from website):
“The Director’s Awards program recognizes significant achievements of Lab employees. Each year, these awards are given for accomplishments, leadership, collaboration, multi-disciplinary science, cross-divisional projects, and commitment to excellence in support of the Lab’s mission and strategic goals.”
I had said that Mid-May, June and July of 2014 was my realization time, with bullying getting worse with each passing day. What I didn’t say was that it went so bad, I had to skip the last two weeks of work. I could not take it beyond mid-July. It was Friday the 18th of July, after which the rest of the month I filled up as vacation and did not go to work. Think about it, it was that unbearable and scary, I could not make it till July 31st, my actual last day. And RZ tried to use this against me as well by going behind my back and talking to HR.
It is so profound to think that because the bullying got out of hand, I did not want to go to work for the last two weeks – three actually – of employment. So I arranged for about 2 weeks of vacation before my official end-date of 31st – because, by this time I was in panic-mode and was too scared to go to work (vacation dates could be verified easily from payroll employment if records exist). I took this time off from my accrued paid time-off days. Had I not been forced by the hostile behavior to stay away from work, I would have been paid for this incurred time. These are vacation days that I had accrued by choosing to do work instead, and it does not include the weekends that I had worked, which is almost every weekend and after-hours, holidays, vacations (including working during paid-time-off trip), that I had worked – and probably why Berkeley Lab kindly thought to summarize me as an unpaid helper whose purpose in life is to raise the luminosity of star employees. If you averaged it out, it was indeed almost free work – the investigator had the math right.
I absolutely had to take the time off as I was getting sick with each passing
day. Especially RZ’s regular personality-switch between alternatingly nice and
hazardously mean, was taking its toll on my health. My subconscious brain
probably caught it sooner than me. One fleeting moment he is coercive and
threatening, and then it is gone so fast replaced with charm and good-nature
and smile that you would think you had imagined those. And then that behavior
again, and backtrack. My subconscious was going nuts. I was becoming terrified
and mentally exhausted. It was like I was seeing persona-volte-face in action.
As if two person inside one, switching and switching.
That year, the awards were announced on the 17th of July, the day before I last stepped foot on Molecular Foundry. Emails were sent out from the Director’s office to the awardees notifying them of their awards and congratulating them.
It was a bright, sunny day. I read the news in my email that I got the Award as a team with RZ for my work on Peppytides. The gain of my all Junes. I walked over to RZ’s office to let him know. He was in a meeting with a student (who is to remain unnamed here), and came and hugged me and congratulated me. ‘We got the award??!!’ he said, ‘Your work must have made some noise.’ He looked thrilled.
The 17th of July was also technically the deadline to apply for the patent that had not panned out (patent details in Part 5). There were of course ceaseless reminders. Cheerful blamings with just smiles and eyebrows. So it was not particularly a happy day. Unlike today, in spite of all that is cloudy.
Then the next day came and went, and I was gone. At the exit interview that day, RZ sat me down and asked for all my documents, writeups and plans for future if I had any. He wouldn’t believe that I had none, and tried to get my laptop again to see for himself and copy. He told me that he also wanted all my slides, and that if I didn’t then he wouldn’t sign my exit as cleared. He then volte-faced, all smiling. By then he was merely talking to himself, and I was just an appendage on a chair. He said that he would let me know the moment he heard about the award ceremony date, that it generally took time to decide on a date by the director’s office, that they do not send emails to non-employees – which I would be soon – about the award date, so I wouldn’t know until he tells, that I didn’t need to worry about anything he will support me, that I needed to take a break and think about switching career, that I should write another user proposal and send to him, that I was going to disappear so he was just making sure that he got all the documents right then because science cannot wait, that the award doesn’t mean much, that he was happy we were getting the award as a team, that I did a great job, and so on. Switching and switching. It was a week full of opposites, unlike this week.
And then I was gone. Really gone. Blissfully gone. Too numb to think beyond the fact that I was at last gone.
Into my vacation, RZ emailed me two days before my termination date giving me fresh news about my Director’s Achievement Award:
“On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Ron Zuckermann wrote:
Subject: BBQ, LBNL award
Hi Promita,
Rita told me you might not be able to come to the farewell BBQ on the 8th. If you could make it we would love to have you!
Also, I got a call today from HR about our LBNL award. Since you are no longer an LBNL employee, they said that you won’t receive a certificate at the award event (since they are for current employees). However, I did make sure that you will still receive the financial portion of the award. So no need to worry about that! This will be added to your final paycheck (not sure how much it is yet). The date is not scheduled yet for the LBNL award event. You are still welcome to come as far as I am concerned, but be aware that you would not receive a certificate on the stage. So I leave it up to you if you’d like to attend.
I hope you are having a nice break with your family.
-Ron“
He was essentially saying that he made sure that I wouldn’t be getting any award anymore and that it was best if I didn’t show up and let him take all the glory at the ceremony. Culmination of my four Junes, a cancellation.
It requires a certain degree of adroitness to be able to gel together barbeque-talk with kicking-you-out-of-award-talk with small-talk. Smooth, smiling and effortless.
We would love to have you’!’
Many times in the past out of the blue, RZ had insulted me on my ‘poor student’ status. He had pointed out my low-pay and bragged about his high salary.
No need to worry about that’!’ No need to worry. No need. No.
He had also said at multiple times that I actually wanted his job. I do not know where that came from. In the above email, he was asking me in very clear terms in his own pseudo-ambiguous way not to bother with attending the ceremony, and that he had made sure I would not be getting a certificate.
As I said, RZ was to get the Director’s Award with me as a “team”. Here is when the “team” started to make sense as did some other disconnected items. Over the course of nomination-to-selection spanning months, he was somehow added mid-way into nomination by some thoughtful nominators at the very end of this cycle, after the nomination made it to the Director’s office final rounds. Probably the exact date/time could be fact-checked from records? “You know how things work at the Lab,” I was told by someone. Suddenly I realized the reason for an Outreach nomination at the outset instead of an Early-career Scientist nomination.
Safely into the nomination “team” RZ was now busy throwing me out of the award, the same way he threw me out of my proposals, and wanted to throw me out of my patent.
This time he blamed it on the HR staff.
By then, I had reached my patience-limit with him. I got adept at seeing through all his tricks quick enough to react back. My response for the award issue was (with CC-ing):
“On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 3:59 PM, Promita Chakraborty wrote:
Hi Ron,
Can you please tell me who the HR person is? I am still an employee. Interestingly, they did not contact me.
Not getting an award certificate means not getting the award. I do not care about the money. They have to cancel the entire award in that case.
Peppytide is the culmination of my last 6 years of hard work. I do not want this award being cancelled just because I am leaving. I have definitely planned to attend the ceremony. I am busy today but later I will contact Paul’s office to learn what is happening.
Thanks,
– Promita“
Within 30 minutes, RZ’s response was:
“On Jul 29, 2014 4:30 PM, “Ron Zuckermann” wrote:
Hi Promita,
Sorry for this. I just spoke with HR again and they are going to see what they can do. Personally I don’t see why they should have a problem providing a certificate. Will keep you posted.”
Another funny backtrack.
Interestingly, what he “personally” saw in just 30 minutes (including a chat with HR), he couldn’t see sooner, before doing the barbecue-talk. Also the wording “providing a certificate” is a bit funny too – it sounds as if I had registered for a course of some kind. Déjà vu for “will primarily be used to pay Promita’s salary” from Part1. These are signs of resisting acceptance of my capability, to say it mildly, which is all I am going to say with dignity.
But he had blamed this on the HR staff. So I asked back who he had talked to in HR to decide to throw me out. He told me the name of the HR he blamed this on (I have the email). He said,
“Hi Promita,
It is [XXX XXXXX] from HR.“
Earlier, he had blamed the patent officers for the patent debacle. He had blamed my exclusion from proposals on the LBL officers, the industry executives and their legal teams, DoE’s funding agency rules and on UC policies in a what-can-I-do manner. He had blamed me for quite a few things. Now he was blaming the HR for the awards.
This latest maneuvering was really the limit for my snapping. This is a special achievement as in general I am usually a soft-spoken, cool-headed, calm, die-hard optimist.
Even if it were the HR to blame – which in this case I suspect is not – even then, if it were my mentee, I would go fight with them to claim the honor back for my mentee. I would be proud to do so. I would not say, no worries I will get her award alone and decorate my walls because she is not employed and I am employed here. But of course for that to happen, I would have to have awareness about my role as a mentor. This excuse couldn’t be more lame, it is already full-on ridiculous, even without/before feigning cluelessness.
There were emails from the Director’s office too from one of the CC-ed loops who seemed obviously confused. After many interactions with more people involved in the group emails, at last RZ apologized:
“Hi Promita,
I wanted to let you know that I (and others) have represented your interests here. This issue actually affects many people. I wanted to assure you that it is being considered at the highest levels, and a resolution should be coming very soon. I really apologize for all this. It is unnecessary and unfortunate. But there is no doubt: you deserve this award and to be recognized!“
(I have more emails on this)
Actually.
Paul Alivisatos, the Director, stayed silent.
On the hindsight, I should have rejected the award. I still squirm at the embarrassing memory. I will never be able to look at this award in my life and feel honored. I have put it up on the wall and taken it down – I cannot bear to look at it.
Then of course six months after this apology, there were all those media articles about “Zuckermann’s peppytides” plus a lot of “we” at NIH, which I detailed in Part2, which meant he was back to business and the above apology was an empty trick to save face. It was a momentary volte-face. It was as fake as everything else he had said. There were no more reasons to continue communicating, and around mid-2015 – after giving him months to fix matters and he didn’t – I stopped responding.
After my last day – July 31st – RZ emailed (on Aug 4th) to let me know that he would not sign my release documents and exit interview paperwork if I did not hand over my slides to him – not the PDFs but the actual presentation files, he wrote. He told HR that I had not returned all the property – the slides – which needed to be done before a release could be released by him.
I sent the slides on Aug 5th mid-morning, the ones he used for the NIH talk later, minus my name (see Part 2). More emails.
HR wrote to me on Aug 5 2014, 2pm:
“Dear Promita,
I was recently informed that your Research Associate appointment ended August 1, 2014.
In order to complete the exit process, please return your research presentation files to your supervisor, Ron Zuckermann, at your earliest convenience.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.“
I wrote back to HR, Aug 5 2014, 4:02pm:
“Hi [XXX],
I had already done that. Here is the link to all the files I sent to Ron:
[XXX]
Total 11 presentation files and template keynote file were in the presentation folder.
That is all I have. Thank you“
And only then the matter was resolved. RZ wrote at 4:07pm that he ‘will get the HR paperwork completed.’
With all the stress and my elevating sickness I could not go and return my badge to the HR on my last day. I went a few days later, and dropped it off at Building 65, the main badge office of LBL, far away from Molecular Foundry, on the complete other side of the long winding road of One Cyclotron Road down the hill.
If the reader is experiencing bouts of hysteria by now, I am sorry. I did not mean to perturb any of you.
After the release paperwork was sorted out that day, I did not have any more energy to fight for anything. I was numb.
And the day ended. Sunset. It dawned on me I would not have to deal with
that lab anymore, what a relief. Peace descended. Or so I thought. A deep
trauma was soon to engulf me.
Over months, I went into a prolonged and severe – and increasingly deeper – depression. A complete meltdown. I have suffered panic attacks, hypertension, occasional hysteria, and post-traumatic stress because of this. A very dark experience with numbness, headaches, sudden internal pains, uncontrollable shaking or crying, uncontrollable laughing, vomiting, sweating, weight gain, muscle pains, a frozen shoulder (yes), neck pain, short-term memory loss, to spell out a few. As some of you know, I am recently coming out of that state. And it has not been an easy journey.
This workplace harm went so deep health-wise and had become so life-threatening, that one cannot overlook the loopholes in safety policies;
Berkeley Lab needs to rethink and implement from scratch the entire paradigm of employee safety. Just saying in some newly-minted bullying policy that they
have no tolerance for harassment and bullying, is not enough, and is actually
quite irresponsible. Further, the institution definitely needs to appraise how
it handles complaints.
Few months later, I attended the award ceremony. It went smoothly. RZ
did not attend, he had something else to do. Alivisatos came over to me during the after-party refreshments and told me to keep him updated on my progress.
As I have moved on without any mentor, it was hard to be alone as a professional. But it has been liberating. I am okay to break away and make my own slow path all alone from scratch. It’s the best way to avoid funny quid pro quo. Best way to avoid continued coercion and reminders that I should have some gratitude for a chance to be a ‘helper’. Best way to proceed towards sound health and non-threatening career. And the fate of women in science.
I am aware that I am bringing the taboo topics of academic lab culture out from under the rock. But this kind of behavior cannot go on in the leading research labs in national labs or universities. We do thinking for bread and butter, we need peace.
Neither should there be acceptance of this PI-type behavior as some kind of norm and open secret at the cost of someone’s career or life. I have the power to voice my concern as an informed observer and I am doing that loud and clear. This multi-part essay is not just an anecdotal attempt at storytelling, but representative of what I have seen in academe around me. In that sense it is in similar line as a qualitative study with ethnographic research about behavior and event codes.
I also want to stand up for people who are forced to be silent. If such harm can happen in the top institutes and universities where there are the best resources to develop and operate a highly publicized grievance system, imagine what can happen where there is less.
It’s time for people in R&D in academia to come forward and take ownership of their accomplishments. As I have said, it is a part of their remuneration. And it is morally empowering.
In short, if you have been told that ‘this is how it works,’ remind yourself that this is not how it should.
As for the backdrop, this is not a case of a bad apple. One absolutely cannot blame apples alone for this. This is because, I complained and the investigation surmised it as a kind behavior, that it is routine, that it is entirely appropriate. In a good system, bad apples get thrown out. That some apples are not even considered bad, the slightest notion that they are actually good apples, is the sign that it is a big systemic problem that needs fixing in 2020 AD.
One final mental note while we are at systemic problems. From my friends, I hear that people have real issues to give science awards to women. Even if they have done good work in science, the awards somehow get classified into Humanitarian or Outreach or some other social genre. Big problem.
Next I talk about the gruel of the reporting and the grievance process. See you soon.
Update (on Feb 28, 2020): Added Link to Part 7.