S11, E2: The Fly Papers
S11, E2: The Fly Papers
Series 11: The Collateral Damage of Revenge in Science
Astronomer and one of the founders of the Exoplanet field of study, Geoff Marcy, was alleged to have behaved inappropriately with some students at UC Berkeley and in 2015 a Title IX investigation was conducted. The finding was that Dr Marcy was guilty on the ‘balance of probabilities’ but it did not recommend that his role at the university be terminated.
In S11, E1: In the Eye of the Swarm, I claimed that the way the Dr Marcy case was handled was effectively determined by mob justice. My comment that there was no due process behind Title IX drew some criticism that was possibly justified. But on the underlying point I am unrepentant; so let me try to do a better job of clarifying it.
After the investigation had concluded, activity outside the process, including intimidation, academic mobbing and defamation was fuelled by leaked confidential information. By December 2015, the campus and Twitter campaigns had moved on to targeting those who worked with Dr Marcy, which prompted his resignation.
He left to protect his colleagues, but that being his intention, the consensus was that this had to be thwarted too. The anger was directed at those who worked and published with him but the purge to root out collaborators continues. This organised persecution and deliberate subversion of process has not been investigated.
Recently, Geoff was forced to remove his name from a paper written by a former graduate student of his (a woman, now an assistant professor) even though he had contributed significantly to it. He did this after his former student and other co-authors were subjected to sustained harassment and intimidation on Twitter […] calling for the assistant professor’s tenure committee to be informed, and many pressuring co-authors to withdraw their names from the paper.
“A testimony of “guilt-by-association” harassment in astronomy”, Heterodox STEM, Beatriz Villarroel
Let’s not pass over that without thinking about what this says about the academics making such threats. They wanted this woman to fear for her career, but more than that, they wanted to destroy her future if she did not comply. Is this not more violent than any inappropriate social interaction?
There is no willingness to drain that swamp because the predatory academic alligators like it murky and ambiguous. That they were putting individuals’ mental health at risk was foreseeable and the consequences could have been tragic. For the sake of some much needed perspective it would be hard to imagine how an awkward remark would carry the same risk to person.
Several male professors and directors in the United States were engaged in the attack on the young, female assistant professor over Twitter. (One of those individuals was also involved in […] actions against me.)
ibid.
This is more coercive than what Geoff Marcy was accused of doing. Forced compliance is misogynistic even if it comes from the friend-zone/pseudo-feminist wing of the Incel spectrum. At what point does the welfare of those targeted become a matter of concern?
Houses of the Holier
Some co-authors have requested their names be removed from publications that credit Geoff Marcy’s contribution, forced to disown their own work to detoxify, as if to unstick themselves from any ‘death kiss’ paper that might link them to him.
This is theft of authorship; it is no defence to say someone handed you their wallet willingly while you had a gun to their head, unless of course, the American Astronomy Society (ASA) are adjudicating the case.
This should not stand. It is a precedent that is dangerous for science and scholarship. It used to be that not giving someone credit for work that is the basis of published work was called plagiarism, or worse.
A Dangerous Attack on the Scientific Process, Critical Mass, Lawrence M. Krauss
Were the routine confiscation of intellectual property to be codified it would amount to institutionalised research misconduct.
As a follow up on this episode, Science magazine published an article praising the reactions to the paper, without recognizing that not crediting Geoff’s contributions to the paper is actual academic misconduct and even goes against the Code of Conduct for journal editors!
“A testimony of “guilt-by-association” harassment in astronomy”, Heterodox STEM, Beatriz Villarroel
And what of those who still do not comply?
In the last two years, I have been harassed and discriminated against on multiple occasions by other astronomers in the international community for my choice to work with exoplanet pioneer Geoff Marcy.
ibid.
Why aren’t UC Berkeley condemning this behaviour given they investigated the matter and concluded that Dr Marcy should not be dismissed. To say silent is to stand for nothing and incentivise cowardice. As most people dived for cover, a few like Dr Villarroel, had the temerity to form their own opinions. Wasn’t that true of most academics before fashion made them outgroup?
As a result of my collaboration with Geoff, a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) conference at a public institution in the United States banned me from presenting results of the VASCO project.
ibid.
Isn’t science more important than this virtue signalling. What wrong do they imagine they are righting by ignoring the VASCO results?
To do so, the organizers used a Code of Conduct with a uniquely crafted paragraph that appeared to be tailored to prevent me specifically from joining, which forbade the promotion of “work of those who have violated Professional Codes of Ethics” and they referred to Geoff when they [SETI] sent me a letter to withdraw my presentation.
ibid.
Interesting. The following is from the Code of Conduct for The First Penn State SETI Symposium. I am not sure this is the event Dr Villarroel is referring to but it is reasonable to assume the code is typical of SETI.
Participants must not:
Engage in harassment, doxxing, bullying, intimidation, discrimination, or retaliation. These forms of abuse include, though are not limited to: […] threatening or stalking […] posting, or threatening to post, people’s personally identifying information
“Code of Conduct”, The First Penn State SETI Symposium, June 27–30, 2022 State College, PA
It seems that all those boxes are checked. The code of conduct heavily references that of the AAS, yet here are some relevant passages from the AAS Code of Ethics, that are being selectively ignored:
… nonverbal harassment (e.g., obscene gestures; distribution, display, or discussion of inappropriate written or graphic material or material that ridicules, denigrates, insults, belittles, or shows hostility or disrespect toward an individual or group), …
Harassment, AAS Code of Ethics
I don’t think there is any question of there being harassment. In the following passages from the AAS definition of bullying, my emphasis is added by bold italics thus:
Bullying is defined as unwelcome or unreasonable behavior that demeans, intimidates, humiliates, or sabotages the work of people, either as individuals or as a group. Bullying behavior is most often aggressive, persistent, and part of a pattern, but it can also occur as a single egregious incident. It is usually carried out by an individual but can also be an aspect of group behavior. […]
Sabotage must include blacklisting, forcing people to relinquish the credit for their work, exclusions from publications, events or ‘academic death kisses’. In its most prevalent and pernicious forms, bullying occurs on social media, in workplaces and academia.
To suggest that it is “usually carried out by an individual ” is ludicrous. See “Academic Mobbing: Hidden Health Hazard at Workplace”, SB Khoo. Why the mischaracterisation? Is it because they are not much interested in tackling mobs? More on that in four paragraphs.
Examples of bullying behaviors include, but are not limited to, verbal bullying (e.g., threatening, slandering, ridiculing, or maligning a person; making abusive or offensive remarks), physical bullying (e.g., pushing, poking, assaulting, threatening assault, or damaging a person’s work area or property), gesture bullying (e.g., nonverbal threatening gestures), or sabotaging an individual’s work.
Meanwhile interpersonal exchanges and conflicts are being increasingly regulated and the effect seems to be infantilism. Consequently, the AAS are happy to be very specific about the school-yard pushing and poking but less so of the threatening [tick], slandering [tick], ridiculing [tick], or maligning [tick] aspects of bullying behaviour. Damaging a person’s property could by any reasonable interpretation include intellectual property as well as pencil cases. Also sabotaging an individual’s work is unambiguous.
Interesting that in addition to the omission of online bullying, no mention is made of texting or emails and although slander is listed, libel isn’t. If you did not want to confront the most virulent manifestations of bullying, this is how you would do it. The fig leaf of generalisation, ‘… but are not limited to, …’ doesn’t cut it.
This summer, the same institute [SETI] organized another meeting, and kept the same Code of Conduct. When I published my first-author paper with Geoff as a co-author in Scientific Reports in 2021, Tweets were circulating showing a screenshot of my and Geoff’s names saying, among other things, “Yes women participate in rape culture”. Other Tweets called for scientists not to cite or promote the paper
“A testimony of “guilt-by-association” harassment in astronomy”, Heterodox STEM, Beatriz Villarroel
Let’s clarify that Geoff Marcy was not accused of rape. Were we to stretch the point to say his alleged behaviour was symptomatic of ‘rape culture’ how would that make his co-authors on a scientific paper, participants after the fact? It would be more accurate to have said; “Not all women participate in mob culture”.
I received intimidating emails and calls from other astronomers. Further, a well-known astronomy promotion page publicly stated they would not promote our paper, nor a California team’s exoplanet paper published some weeks earlier (which also had Geoff as a co-author), as they condemned sexual harassment (as if anyone doesn’t).
ibid.
Recall how emails, telephone calls, social media posts and leaks to the press are apparently exempted from any code of conduct and ask yourself why. Next consider how strange it is for an ‘astronomy promotion page’ to publicly announce they don’t want to promote a paper. Let’s try to make some sense of this; what does it mean to mention something, just so you can make clear you don’t want to mention it?
They were opposed to promoting the paper even if it unfairly penalised contributors or was detrimental to science. Try to hold that thought in your head, while considering that it is apparently legitimate to use the paper as a platform for sanctimonious outrage. Even if (and this is important) innocent co-authors are maligned and harassed in the process.
It is an odd form of sainthood to make your point by putting someone else to the stake. In their heads I am sure they are standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square under a barrage of uncomfortable humour.
My first-author paper was excluded from a monthly newsletter because apparently I wasn’t the brain behind my own paper as one of the professors running that newsletter sexistly claimed that Geoff “had a heavy hand in it”, that he “knows Geoff’s style well” and he did not want to promote Geoff’s work.
ibid.
If you read her account you will find two things wrapped up in this. First, the presumption that she was not capable of producing the published work and second, that she lied about it. Both are very serious accusations, which depending on the form they took, are potentially slanderous or libellous. I return to the defamation question in S11, E3: Bonfire of the Ironies but for now let’s look at the logic of what is being objected to.
Dr Marcy removed his name from other papers to protect his co-authors but presumably that also meant those papers can continue to be referenced without risking unbounded retribution i.e. TBD by a mob in the future.
Let’s temporarily assume Dr Marcy “had a heavy hand in it”; what would be wrong given his byline is absent? Would the objection be to his intellectual productivity?
If that is true the professor making these claims should exclude himself from further contributions. The fact that he “knows Geoff’s style well” suggests he is a beneficiary of the content that he wants to deny to others. In fact large portions of the entire field of study is built on Dr Marcy’s work so where does it stop?
None of those explanations work but what does is far simpler; the objective was to discredit Dr Villarroel. It was a personal attack.
After I organized a successful meeting where I had invited Geoff, I was subjected to direct intimidation (threat-like) and allegations, which caused so much stress that I ended up in the emergency room some weeks later.
ibid.
Dr Villarroel was harmed but if you disagree it makes no difference. The members of various faculties and academic organisations behaved in a way intended to harm people. Even if no damage was done it would be of no consequence. Harm was an anticipatable outcome and they did it anyway - in fact that’s why they did it. Other people whose job it was to prevent harm were derelict in their duty.
When I applied to become an affiliate at a SETI-friendly institute in California just as my postdoc funds were finishing, I was informed that as an affiliate I could not apply for grants or publish papers as long as my team included Geoff. I had no option but to withdraw my application.
ibid.
In case it has to be pointed out this is discrimination.
Another SETI-friendly conference in the United States first invited me some months ago, but later did not confirm my registration and never replied when I emailed them asking about my registration. I still do not know what happened, only that I will not be there. So when I read Tweets wishing “academic death kisses” to all collaborators of Geoff with concrete suggestions on how to punish Geoff’s collaborators, I feel these words strongly.
ibid.
So this is blacklisting where rejection is typically both automatic and silent; surely a violation under the SETI/AAS codes? What of Title IX? Does it matter that Dr Villarroel is working in Sweden if those committing offences against her are based in US universities? Is this one of those acceptable forms of discrimination countenanced in US academia?
It is shameful and unacceptable in a civilized society that we who wish to work with Geoff must experience waves of harassment from colleagues eight years after he was canceled as a result of accusations that were never subject to legal due process.
ibid.
Is it right that new punishments are dreamed up by a mob who are helping themselves to the work of others as if it belonged to their cause?
In the last month, I sent a letter to several of the major organizations for professional astronomers explaining the issue. I hope so much for one of these organizations to help. As the letter circulated, the American Astronomical Society invited me to report the separate instances of harassment and discrimination to their “Code of Ethics Committee”, but sadly, they have so far not taken a single action to prevent further harassment and informed me that they “consider these cases closed”. The bullying can freely go on.
ibid.
This is a clear failure. I do understand that the AAS must be intimidated and that taking on unpopular causes, no matter how deserving, might just lead to them getting ‘death kisses’ of their own. So they are taking steps to make their own lives a bit easier and little else.
The Institutionalisation of Research Misconduct
In an email to Science, AAS President Kelsey Johnson confirmed the society’s ethics working group is now considering whether to classify “sexual harassment—and indeed all forms of harassment, discrimination, and bullying—as ‘research misconduct.’” Such a move, she noted, “would strengthen the ability … to issue sanctions.”
“After outcry, disgraced sexual harasser removed from astronomy manuscript”, Science, Katie Langin
‘Research misconduct’ covers a group of offences that include the falsification of empirical results, the misrepresentation of statistics, unethical experimentation and plagiarism (irony alert).
What the AAS are considering has nothing to do with addressing their own failings or those of universities. To ‘strengthen the ability… to issue sanctions’ is about making adjudications easier for administrators and not making them fairer.
As something becomes increasingly codified, the scope for discretion is reduced and it therefore becomes easy to say ‘I am just following the rules’. The paradox is that in the guise of acquiring more powers, it seems the aim is to abdicate responsibility for decision making by broadening the scope of what can be classified as ‘research misconduct’.
Ironically, removing someone’s name from papers or denying them credit for their contribution, is serious research misconduct. It’s made worse by being officially sanctioned which invites the question of what one has to believe to think that the authorship of academic papers can be arbitrarily removed?
It is worth remembering that people publish academic papers while incarcerated and (as someone recently made me aware) there are university to prison outreach programmes to aid this. Berkeley runs at least one. There is no suggestion that this constitutes condoning the crimes committed.
In history, some exceptional scholars (mostly women), have been denied the credit for their scientific and literary contributions. Now, as then, power is corrupting and it just so happened that men had all the power. The answer cannot be ‘affirmative corruption’ where the history of science is subject to real-time editing and ‘appropriation’.
That is what the Ministry of Truth did in Orwell’s much quoted by widely misunderstood Nineteen-Eighty-Four. To go willingly into the post-truth era is to allow power to become untethered from any ability to hold it to account. This is discussed more generally in the article linked below.
