Misconduct's forgotten victims.

Abstract

The drumbeat of complaints over the poor treatment of graduate students and postdocs in academic science continues. As explained on this page, there is a seemingly endless "slow-motion crisis" of strikes, failures at collective bargaining, and damaging news stories about the mistreatment of and poor working conditions for graduate students. Meanwhile, a parade of stories about academic fraud and failures to address research integrity undermine public trust in science. These two threads are connected. Although media coverage of research misconduct tends to focus on the motives and actions of high-flying faculty members and their institutions, the casualties of such tumult are hardly mentioned: the trainees who may be traumatized personally and harmed professionally by the clumsy, opaque, and slow way that institutions deal with these incidents.