Is industry better at dealing with sexual harassment than academia?

I haven’t been able to express my thoughts about Linda Wang and Andrea Widener’s cover article in this week's C&EN on sexual harassment in academia. (I should note here that Linda is my editor for the Bench and Cubicle columns that I write for C&EN.)

While we're doing full disclosure here, I should note my opinions on the issue: I don't have any doubt that sexual harassment has and does happen in academia. For any particular case of academic sexual harassment that is brought to light in the public, I am much more inclined to believe the accuser who comes forward.

I thought it was a well-researched, comprehensive and gripping article that forced the reader to confront the reality of sexual harassment in the chemical sciences. Each story demonstrated the impact of sexual harassment:  a woman student who is harassed by an male adviser will find themselves isolated, confused, doubting themselves, unable to communicate these issues easily with confidants, potentially ashamed to go their family and they will face a departmental structure that is incentivized to have that student disappear.

What I am most struck by in the article is the pervasive sense that academic departments and universities will continue to self-police. In my humble opinion, no academic process outside of a court of law can deliver a just outcome. After watching the UC system defend Professor Patrick Harran against the Los Angeles District Attorney to the tune of millions of dollars, does anyone think that universities will step up for those at the bottom of the academic hierarchy? I am not really one that is inclined to legislative solutions to problems, but I am certainly tempted by the article's mention of Rep. Speier's bill that would require substantiated cases of harassers to be reported to the funding agencies. If it's a bad idea, it's a useful one that will introduce some threat of accountability into the system.

Something that I was surprised at was this statement from "Elizabeth":

"Some people think industry is where the harassment happens,” Elizabeth says. “But in industry, creeps get fired."

On Twitter, there were a number of people who found this statement worthy of some skepticism.

I am certainly skeptical as well, but I think that it depends on what she meant by "industry." For the 40% of Americans who work at companies with more than 1000 employees, I have no doubt that HR departments (and the lawyers that birthed them) fundamentally expect and enforce a zero-tolerance perspective on issues of sexual harassment. For smaller companies? I also have no doubt that there are well-run shops where sexual harassment is not welcome, and there are some (many?) that probably have terrible cultures.

So I am inviting industrial readers: do you think sexual harassment happens less in industry? If so, why? (My guess: the power differential between employer and employee is never quite the gulf that it is between PI and student.)

pl pll pirn bpa pscale: How much is Bruker charging these days?

A while back, I noted the news that Agilent was going to stop manufacturing Varian NMRs. Marc Reisch and Jyllian Kemsley's article in C&EN suggested that there would be some pricing repercussions from the sole NMR manufacturer left in the business, Bruker:

In response to an analyst’s question about whether Bruker would take the opportunity to raise NMR prices with Agilent gone, Laukien indicated that prices would indeed rise. “Historically, there had been, in some cases, just very aggressive discounting. I think that may abate quite a bit,” he said.

This morning on Twitter, Cornell professor Dave Collum suggested that I write about Bruker pricing and how it has changed since Agilent has announced its departure. So, I am asking you, dear readers, if you've heard any rumblings about how Bruker's pricing has changed in the last year or two...

A useful bad idea from me: isn't there some consortium of universities, government research centers and the like that could band together and purchase the Varian NMR division from Agilent and run it as basically a non-profit, just so Bruker would have a competitor (other than JEOL, that is?) Surely, this would be a boondoggle, but there might be some good from it.

So, anyone want to go into the NMR manufacturing business? 

ScienceCareers: Ph.Ds, don't apply for BS/MS positions

This piece in ScienceCareers is rather hard to read. It's about Ph.D. scientists who apply for B.S/M.S.-level positions, written by a scientific recruiter:

The discovery that you’re overqualified for many advertised jobs often comes as a rude shock. You’ve seen the ads, as Jonathan did, seeking skills in your area of expertise—but the employer hasn’t specified a Ph.D. Instead, the employer is seeking someone with a Bachelor of Science or a Master of Science degree. That’s not ideal, but you have those degrees, too, so why not apply? 

“Each of our labs has openings for B.S. or M.S.-level scientists who play a key role in our research effort. But those labs also have positions for Ph.D.s, and the two are completely separate roles,” says a client of mine, a human resources (HR) manager for a multinational R&D institution. 

I told the client a story that Jonathan shared with me: Jonathan called a networking contact and found himself speaking to the hiring manager for a position he had applied to previously. He asked why his application hadn’t succeeded, and the hiring manager gave him an answer: He was overqualified for the position. 

My client gasped audibly when I relayed that story. This was, apparently, a violation of standard protocol: Managers should “know better than to provide a lot of color,” my client says. Apparently, they’re not supposed to reveal that much about why they didn’t hire you. That’s why you rarely get a direct answer to questions like that. My HR contact, though, shared more information with me about being overqualified, so now I can share it with you.  

Read the whole thing, if only so you can share in my irritation.

I can't help but agree with Mr. Jensen that applying for and accepting a B.S./M.S.-level position is rather unwise, in that it is a dramatically different role than Ph.D.s. What I am surprised at his choice to not talk about why they might be applying for these roles, i.e. they can't find work as Ph.D.-level research scientists.

Finally, it's sad that, in our lawyer/lawsuit-phobic* culture,  we apparently can't tell applicants what we think about them. It's good for companies, sure, but it sure leaves the applicant confused. We need to be giving people feedback, even it's unpleasant. I am not really one to suggest changes to federal law, but it seems to me that passing a law to offer employers limited immunity to lawsuits in exchange for telling applicants (especially on-site interviewees) their weaknesses would be a good idea.

UPDATE: Anon0919140334P rather effectively repudiates Mr. Jensen:

Wow... I'm sure glad I didn't follow this guy's advice 8 years ago when I applied to my current company. I am a PhD chemist, and had been working as a postdoc in a national lab. I applied for a BS/MS posting because it was exactly in line with what I wanted to do and looked like a nearly perfect match for my skill sets. The only drawback was that they were looking for someone at a lower degree level. When I interviewed, I learned that the position was a replacement for a technician who had left the company. The group was looking to increase its skill level, and thought a BS/MS was the right slot for the job. 

I convinced them I'd be a better choice, and though there were some growing pains initially (group didn't function properly at first when I changed the role from technician to scientist), I was eventually promoted to lead the group. I've been doing that for the past four years. I also make significantly above the ACS salary median for PhDs, so it's not like I locked myself into a low-paying role by applying for an MS position. 

I've been on several recent hiring committees, and in many cases we consider candidates with different degree levels. I actually interviewed someone today. In his company, the only people who advance up the science ladder are PhDs, and he's looking to get out of there specifically because of that culture (has a BS + 15 years of technical & managerial experience). He stated that one of the reasons he applied for this position is because he's heard that it's still possible to advance in our company without a doctorate. This is definitely true, and is supported by the fact that two of our current top scientists have MS degrees.  

I therefore take a stance that's opposite from Jensen's: If you have a PhD and there's an MS level position that looks attractive, you should absolutely apply for it. If the company has the right culture, you might just get the job and find yourself in a place you can spend the rest of your career.

I think the trick is, most large enough companies have HR/hiring cultures that are more like Jensen's client and less like Anon's. More's the pity. 

A modest proposal: Judgement Day (not a week or a month or years)

"Today, I settled all family business, so..."
Photo credit: emulsioncompulsion.com

Rumors of layoffs seem to always overhang the pharmaceutical business -- it seems like, at some companies, there's a slow painful drip of impending cuts. Worse, the pace of cuts seem to be accelerating from once every couple of years to once every few months. These cuts seem to take place in a few awful steps:

1. Cuts are rumored to take place at some near-future date; often, this date gets delayed. 
2. Productive higher-level thinking often grinds to a halt as the 'true' date gets closer and everyone waits until the ax has fallen. 
3. The ax falls: shock, dismay and horror. Survivors' guilt reigns amongst the survivors. The laid-off leave and their absence is felt profoundly. 
4. Employees say, "Wow, they're now cutting bone, not fat. They can't possibly cut anymore."
5. After being asked and asked and asked, management says, "We don't plan to make any cuts again for a long, long time..."
6. Cuts are rumored to take place...

Here's the Chemjobber plan for creating some level of morale in the meantime. It will never get implemented, but what's the harm?:

1. Management decides that they're going to revisit cuts at some future date, 2 or 3 or (dare I suggest) 4 years in the future. 
2. Day 1: Management lays waste to their R&D departments, cutting all the people they think they're going to cut in the next 4 years. 
3. Day 2: Management announces to their workers: "We've cut all the people we're going to cut until October 1, 20XX. Congratulations, you're the new team. You have (whatever) years until we make another decision on layoffs. Breathe easy until then."
4. After 2 months of survivor's guilt and freaking out, everyone settles down and gets to work, ignoring that future date until it's soon enough to worry. 

This, of course, is a plan that completely ignores the reality that business expectations (shareholders, etc.) in our modern times seem to hold. It will never happen. But I think it would create some space for being able to engender some level of trust and calm among the employees.*

*I suspect that this plan would have all sorts of weird effects on hiring, etc. The pharma world would start to look a lot more like professional sports in its hiring patterns, which I'm not quite sure is a good thing. 

Did industrial chemistry have 'tenure'? Should it?

While the story of Charles Davis is certainly sad, it is also instructive; it points to the differences between academic science and industry. Both Douglas Prasher and Richard Heck have talked about the difficulty of securing funding for their positions, but their stories only point to the holes in a fairly secure academic science safety net. In a slightly different world, Doug Prasher would now be a full professor at a university, happily teaching classes and writing letters for postdocs. In a slightly different world, both men would have tenure and struggle, but still be able to secure funding for their work.

In the industrial world, there is no safety net. It seems, from stories of the old days of industrial chemists, that bench guys like Don Suddaby were employed well into their older years, quietly working away. Now it seems layoffs appear like off-kilter Biblical plagues that strike only middle-aged and older, leaving their younger colleagues wondering when the HR Angel of Death will darken their door.

I know, I know -- a company is not a charity, and the world is more cutthroat (as Prasher would put it) and more competitive than ever. And yes, royalties and consulting gigs are there for the blessed few. Unleashing a force like tenure into the industrial world would not lead to more innovation and better outcomes -- I think it would be a bad idea. But I think there should be something. I don't know what the answer is, but it might just be a more humane future for industrial chemists.

Is a messy lab unsafe?



Messy much? The Chemjobber Archives

 Paul's post on gloves on doorknobs and a Hall of Shame made me think about one of my biggest faults: I'm a messy chemist.

When I was in graduate school, I would have flasks littering my hood sash, each with 50 to 100 mgs of material that was waiting, waiting to be either cleaned out or stored in a vial. Quite honestly, it got pretty bad. Sadly, not much better in my postdoc. I'm a lot better at work, but that's with a fair bit of peer pressure to Keep Things Neat.

I try to clean up the clutter, really I do -- but the tide of stuff just keeps coming. But the one critique that seems to resonate more than others is that messy labs can be a safety risk. I can think of many anecdotal stories about chemical accidents where the situation was made worse by some amount of Reagent X in unclean glassware Y that Chemist Z had failed to put away in time. In the assessments of one of the recent university lab accidents, I seem to recall (but cannot find) that because the lab was relatively neat and clutter-free, a bad accident was not made much worse.

I'll tell you this: if I found a picture of my hood in the Wall of Shame, I'd probably be humiliated and (potentially) angry. I'd also clean up my hood pretty darn fast. To paraphrase something I've said elsewhere, the only things that seem to change human behavior are guilt, greed or fear. Sigh.