{"id":1915,"date":"2025-04-21T12:39:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T11:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2025-04-21T14:33:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:33:33","slug":"wellcome-cruk-and-bullying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=1915","title":{"rendered":"Wellcome, CRUK and Bullying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 21 Group has been receiving complaints about bullying from staff in UK Universities for over a year. One subject stands out as the worst for bullying and harassment. It is cancer research<\/strong>. We are aware of ongoing and serious issues at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London, involving multiple individuals and court cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cambridge Culture Survey results for CRUK-Cam<\/a> and the Department of Oncology<\/a> are above. These are percentages of all those who gave an opinion (don’t knows excluded). Both departments have large proportions disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with statements like “I’m satisfied at how bullying and harassment are addressed<\/em>” or “I’d feel comfortable raising concerns about bullying<\/em>“, Our aim here is not to highlight the problems at Cambridge University recently reported in The Observer<\/em><\/a> but to demonstrate the local manifestation of a global problem in this research field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, there have been well-publicised problems at flagship cancer research institutes. In 2018, the management of the Cambridge Wellcome Sanger <\/a>Institute were accused of presiding over an entrenched culture of bullying and gender discrimination by whistleblowers, as reported in The Guardian<\/em> here<\/a>. They were ultimately cleared, though problems with management style and behaviour were acknowledged. The whistleblowers disputed findings<\/a> that cleared the management of bullying. Also in 2018, the Francis Crick Institute <\/a>faced allegations of bullying and inappropriate research culture reported here<\/a>. This ended with the whistleblower receiving a six figure sum in compensation for the harm done (presumably with an NDA as details in the press are scarce).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the funding agencies actually doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anti-bullying policy of Cancer Research UK is here <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

4.6 How CRUK handles allegations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone can report a concern or allegation of bullying, harassment, abuse and harm related to CRUK-funded research. Concerns and allegations should always be reported to the employing organisation, or if this is not known, the organisation that is running the research project. It is the employing organisation\u2019s responsibility to investigate …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[If the institution finds bullying substantiated] CRUK may:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • remove the person from the affected grant(s), from a CRUK Panel or Committee<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • withdraw funding from the grantholder. CRUK will work with the Relevant Organisation to minimise the impact on any staff working on the affected grant(s), which may include transferring the grant to another suitable investigator to allow the work to be completed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • prohibit that person from acting as a PhD supervisor for CRUK-funded students<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • temporarily or permanently restrict them from future grant applications (or specific types of grant applications) or from being invited to be a member of a CRUK Panel or Committee<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    So if a university finds a researcher guilty of bullying, then he or she can’t apply for grants. Unsurprisingly, this policy has the effect that universities never find anyone guilty of bullying, as they’d lose millions in grant money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In any case, university or research institute investigations already have a bias to find nothing because they are tasked with investigating themselves. They are resistant to admit there are problems because doing so increases their legal liability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After the events at the Cambridge Wellcome Sanger Institute, the then Director of Wellcome wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    \u201cWellcome has made diversity and inclusion a priority and, like most scientific institutions, there is more to do at the Wellcome Sanger Institute to make good on this commitment. These issues should have been recognised and acted on sooner, and I apologise for not doing so (Sir Jeremy Farrar, then Director of Wellcome, 2018).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    This now seems to have been forgotten<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Both CRUK’s and Wellcome’s approach to driving research culture change seems to have devolved into a top-down attitude of deliberate blindness to workplace bullying, harassment and victimisation at places they fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Two obvious changes are: (i) the funding agency should commission the investigation not the university or research institute and (ii) the funding agency should be provided with copies of the annual staff surveys of culture at the institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The research funder has a duty to speak up about bullying, support victims and enhance research culture. Without fundamental changes to the ways in which senior scientists are assessed and incentivized, bullying and exploitation of researchers will continue in Wellcome and CRUK funded institutes and departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The 21 Group has been receiving complaints about bullying from staff in UK Universities for over a year. One subject stands out as the worst for bullying and harassment. It is cancer research. We are aware of ongoing and serious issues at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London, involving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1938,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}