Sexual harassment in science: tackling abusers, protecting targets, changing cultures

Adam Levy: 00:03

Hello, I’m Adam Levy and this is Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. This episode: harassment and abuse in science.

This series has been dedicated to discussing the freedom and safety of scientists, threats that come from both within and outside of science.

In our previous episode, we discussed harassment and bullying within research. But as well as academic harassment, scientists and science around the world are affected by sexual harassment and assault, the topic of today’s podcast. Sexual misconduct, is not exclusive to one particular institution or even to science itself.

But today, as a particular case study, we’re looking at one account that made headlines when it was first reported, and investigating what the institution has done in the year-and-a-half since, to address the situation.

Late in 2021 the science world was rocked by news of sexual harassment at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, also known as STRI.

The story, which Nature covered in early 2022, was first reported by BuzzFeed in an article titled The Smithsonian’s MeToo moment, featuring the accounts of 16 women.

One of those women, Sarah Batterman, has agreed to share her account with us. Sarah is an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist based at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, New York, and the University of Leeds, UK.

She’s also still connected to STRI as a research associate. Sarah started out by explaining how she first came to work at the institute.

Sarah Batterman: 02:01

I began working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute since the beginning of my PhD in 2008, and did most of my PhD research there. And I’ve continued working there ever since

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is the premier research station in the tropics. And probably a vast majority of people who work in tropical forests from all over the world have done research there at some time, or worked with someone who’s done research there at some time.

So to be able to work there is, can really make your career, and really accelerate your career as an early career scientist.

Adam Levy: 02:41

And can you explain what it was actually like to start out working at the research institute?

Sarah Batterman: 02:47

It was exciting. I got to go and immediately be immersed in this intellectual environment that was incredibly stimulating.

I got to meet some of the scientists whose papers I’d been reading. And I got to start doing research that has really launched me in my career and helped me get to where I am today.

Adam Levy: 03:11

But I understand that some of your experiences at the institute were less positive?

Sarah Batterman: 03:16

Yes. So definitely there’s been a lot of negative things that have happened to me, that have also impacted my career, which mainly involve sexual harassment and sexual assault.

When I was also a couple of years into my PhD, I was sexually harassed and ultimately sexually assaulted by a collaborator who was a staff scientist at STRI, Dr Ben Turner.

And that has carried with me for over a decade and made pretty serious consequences for my productivity, for my mental health, for my personal life, that’s yeah, it’s been, it’s been really challenging.

Adam Levy: 04:08

Would you be able to explain how it affected you, maybe at the time that this took place?

Sarah Batterman: 04:14

So this was in 2011. And I, I was at a academic conference in Iceland. It was pretty small.

And Dr Turner, who I had started working at his lab in Panama, but he suddenly at this conference, turned his attention on me and began pursuing me and taking a lot of interest in me, wanting to talk about my ideas.

And this carried on back to Panama, where I later went that year to do research. And he began showing me all this unwanted sexual attention that I felt super uncomfortable with.

Ultimately, he manipulated me into spending time with him and doing things with him that I was very uncomfortable with, by dangling opportunities over me.

And so I felt in such a vulnerable place at that time in my career because I, you know, when you’re a PhD student, the next step is so anxiety-provoking.

You know, what postdoc are you going to get? Are you going to get a postdoc? And so, you know, knowing that I had someone at STRI who really seemed to really like my research, and was going to be that advocate for me when the decisions were made to, you know, about who would get the fellowships, that was huge.

But then, you know, the negative side with that was that then I felt like I had to go along with the things that he wanted to do, that were couched as professional things, you know, “Oh, let’s go on this trip to Arizona, to this other conference. And we’ll take several days to tour around Arizona, and we’ll do research during the time, you’ll get a publication out of it. And we’ll also get to talk about that postdoc fellowship.”

Things like that, which, you know, is like, super inappropriate for a PhD student to be going on a trip around Arizona with a STRI staff scientist.

But I felt like I needed to, because he was saying, like, “Oh, come do these things. And I will support your fellowship application. You’ll, you’ll get a publication out of this. So I was just in a really vulnerable place where, you know, my career felt like it was on the line.”

And this powerful person at the Smithsonian, who was a gatekeeper to resources at the Smithsonian, was manipulating what I did, by really, you know, holding that power over me.

It was incredibly difficult. I felt very just torn up about what was happening. I felt so uncomfortable. And it ended after I was…I went to a conference, I went to AGU, the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, and Dr. Turner was also there, and wanted me to go out drinking with him.

And on the last night of the conference, we were out at a bar with another scientist, and she had to go somewhere else. So after about eight o’clock, she left and she, she noticed like that I was just so drunk. But she thought that Dr Turner and I were friends, and that, you know, everything would be fine.

And I don’t even remember her leaving. But the next thing I knew was early the next morning, I was in Dr Turner’s bed, and I realized that I had been sexually assaulted. And I had zero memory of it. That was the, that was the end. At that point, I just, it felt awful. I was so confused. And so, just didn’t know how, you know, that could have happened to me.

It took me 10 years, almost 10 years to even fully comprehend that I had been assaulted. For me, as a result of that, it meant that working on projects in Panama were incredibly difficult.

And I didn’t understand that, like I didn’t know why, like it was so hard to get myself to work on research from Panama, which I beat myself up about, you know, like, “Oh, you’re procrastinating on this thing, on this project.”

And what I’ve realized now is, oh, I was procrastinating because that was my brain protecting myself from those memories of being like so incredibly violated.

It was compounded by the fact that I had to continue collaborating with Dr Turner after the assault happened. The way that things work at STRI, you need these gatekeepers to be involved in your research in order to have access to all the resources at the institute.

So I had to continue working with him, which ultimately led to him retaliating against me, you know, ending things with him by trying to take over some of my projects, withholding data from me, just being like a pretty difficult collaborator.

It was almost 10 years of a lot of pain after what happened, which made a lot of my research really difficult. I estimate that I lost three of the 10 years in productivity because of what happened to me. And that, you know, that’s a lot. That, like, has a huge impact on a career.

Adam Levy: 09:40

I understand that in 2020 you made the decision to file a formal complaint. How did you decide to make this step?

Sarah Batterman: 09:50

I didn’t seek to address what had happened to me for almost a decade. My, you know, the trauma I didn’t fully accept what had happened to me and I I also thought that I was the only person that this had happened to.

But everything changed in January 2020 when I was approached by another female scientist who works at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

And she said to me, “Hey, I’ve been sexually harassed by Dr Ben Turner. When I told him to stop, he started retaliating against me, and trying to hold up my research, withholding data. And I heard that he’s been really difficult towards you.”

And I was just completely floored, because everything that she told me sounded exactly like what he had done to me. And suddenly, people just started coming out of the woodwork who had been sexually harassed by him.

And the pattern was the same over and over and over and over again. It helped me to realize like what had fully, what had happened to me, and just, it was totally wrong.

And so once I knew that other people were being affected by him, other early career women, I just couldn’t let that continue. And so that’s when I decided to make a formal complaint to STRI.

Adam Levy: 11:13

Was there any nervousness or hesitation before making this complaint?

Sarah Batterman: 11:18

I was terrified. I was terrified that STRI would not take the complaint seriously. And I was terrified that it would negatively affect my career.

And we actually had data that they wouldn’t take the complaint seriously. So a couple of women had made some informal complaints about Dr Turner a couple of years earlier, to the former director of STRI, and basically, the direct former director gave Dr Turner a slap on the wrist and told him “Hey, like, you know, I hear you behaved badly. You can’t do that anymore.”

You know, what faith did we have that STRI was going to take our complaint seriously?

Adam Levy: 12:03

And can you explain what the response you received from STRI was actually like?

Sarah Batterman: 12:07

They ended up taking it very seriously. So they hired an external investigator, and they did what appeared to be a very thorough investigation.

And ultimately, we know that Dr Turner no longer works at STRI. But the process itself of reporting, and then the outcome, had some hiccups that were really frustrating and anxiety-producing, and they didn’t actually tell us what the outcome was.

All they could tell us was that our complaint had been taken very seriously and that Dr Turner no longer worked at STRI, but like, we don’t know, what that meant.

Like, was he fired? Did he resign? Did he get a severance package like? And that has implications for you know, that his record as an employee of the institute and ability to go on and then move to another institution and potentially continue doing the same thing to other women.

Adam Levy: 13:06

Can you explain then the further action that you ended up taking in 2021

Sarah Batterman: 13:12

I felt like I needed to go public with what had happened to me and, and another reason for going public was that I began to talk to more and more women who had worked at STRI, most as visiting researchers. And almost all, like over 75% of the women that I talked to, I spoke to over 30 women, and over 75% of them had had experiences of sexual harassment or sexual assault at STRI.

And it wasn’t just Dr Turner, it was pervasive, because STRI just seemed to be trying to sweep the Dr Turner issues under the rug, and not really do anything else.

I felt like the only way to actually get action would be to go public with my story and, and with the story of several other women who also had negative experiences at STRI.

Adam Levy: 14:06

So I understand that you went public via a piece in Buzzfeed. What was the response that you received to this piece?

Sarah Batterman: 14:14

Overwhelmingly positive. I just couldn’t believe the outpouring of support that I received from the scientific community, from people at STRI.

I received so many messages from people who had had experiences of sexual assault or sexual harassment in science who just said like, “Thank you, this has opened something that is just so pervasive and so harmful. And what you did was really important.”

That was gratifying because I was mostly terrified of haters and of people threatening, and things like that. But I didn’t actually receive any negative feedback

Adam Levy: 14:57

Has reporting both to the Smithsonian, and then then more publicly had an emotional or a career cost for you?

Sarah Batterman: 15:06

Yes, I basically spent two years reporting the sexual harassment at STRI, and then going public with the BuzzFeed story.

I felt like I was able to get the minimal essential research done during that time I, but I felt like I wasn’t able to be nearly as productive as I would have been if I wasn’t spending two thirds of my week on the phone with other women, and lawyers, and reporters and attorneys, you know, the investigator talking about sexual harassment.

But I felt at the time, and I still feel now, that it was really important to do. And I wouldn’t say that I’m fully past it, but I am way past where I was emotionally with the trauma in 2020.

Adam Levy: 15:56

You are still in academia. But was there ever a risk, as far as you perceive it, that all these events would end up forcing you out of your discipline?

Sarah Batterman: 16:07

Yes, that was that was my fear in reporting. And also all the years before, you know, when I didn’t want anyone to find out what had happened. I was scared that if my other collaborators found out what happened that they wouldn’t want to work with me anymore.

So many women are no longer in science because of the sexual harassment and sexual assault that they experience in science.

There were, you know, I think this gatekeeper model of power is really empowering for harassers, and so harmful for their targets.

So early career scientists are dependent on later career scientists for access to resources, for access to funding, for access for their letters of recommendation. And it creates a power dynamic that’s so easily abused. There’s, you know, women who, who I spoke to are no longer in science, in part because of the sexual harassment that they experienced.

Adam Levy: 17:05

How unusual do you think that these experiences with STRI are, compared to experiences of women in academia as a whole?

Sarah Batterman: 17:16

This is a thing. It’s not just STRI. This is a pervasive issue in academia that hurts women everywhere. There was a 2014 survey of field experiences of people in science which found that 64% of early career scientists who did remote fieldwork experienced sexual harassment, and 20% of them survived sexual assault. I mean, that’s huge.

That’s, that’s terrifying for all these young scientists who are going to the field to launch their careers. You know, we wonder why women drop out of the pipeline and science, why we don’t have women represented, especially at, you know, later career stages.

And it’s like, all this crap that we have to deal with. It’s, it’s a major cost, emotionally, professionally, it’s something that we need to change.

Adam Levy: 18:07

What’s your hope, then, for how institutions can change, to better respond to, or perhaps more importantly, to better prevent harassment and assault in the future?

Sarah Batterman: 18:18

We need fundamental policy change to make science a safe place for women. So one of the things we need to do is address this gatekeeper model. We need to distribute the power, so it’s not just concentrated in one person.

We also need to make sure we have safety standards and protocols for people who are travelling to research sites and also to conferences.

It was something that, you know, was not talked about when I was a PhD student: safety. We don’t talk about safety in the field. We don’t talk about like, how it’s inappropriate for a professor or a staff scientist to pursue a PhD student. We don’t talk about what do you do if you feel unsafe in the field? What do you do if you’re sexually assaulted?

We also need to streamline reporting systems and making it clear and easy for people to report harassment and assault. And also make sure that people know that if they do report, that they will be taken seriously and support them.

And the last thing that I think is really important is to adopt ethical standards so that perpetrators can’t just move on to, like, new pastures and continue to violate community norms. I think it’s something that we need to think about as a science community.

Adam Levy: 19:38

That was Sarah Batterman. Nature has also contacted Ben Turner twice, but had not received a reply by the time this podcast went live.

Given the structural issues that Sarah mentioned, we wanted to see what has changed at STRI since the story broke.

The institute’s new director Josh Tewksbury started in July 2021, just five months before the BuzzFeed article was published. And when we spoke with Josh, he told us,

Josh Tewkesbury: 19:55

It’s important to note that none of the people that were mentioned in the BuzzFeed article as potential perpetrators are a part of the institution anymore.

Adam Levy: 20:00

But what changes has Josh put in place to respond to future accusations, as well as safeguard scientists from sexual harassment and assault in the first place? And what were Josh’s experiences taking on this role at this pivotal time.

After all, when he applied for the role, the events weren’t yet public. And so he was unaware of what had been taking place at STRI.

Josh Tewkesbury: 20:42

And so my first knowledge of the situation happened when I was read in after I had accepted the position.

Adam Levy: 20:50

What did it feel like for you to be taking on the role at this time with all of this upheaval taking place within the institution?

Josh Tewkesbury: 21:00

When I was read in to the events, and I recognized the gravity and the seriousness of the situation for the institution, and most importantly, for the individuals involved, for the survivors, I recognized that the leadership that I was going to have to provide would be a fairly different character than I had signed up for.

And yet, that’s the job, is to lead the institution from where it is to the place where you think it needs to be.

And so it was pretty clear within a month after joining that the first 18 months, or maybe significantly longer of my tenure as director, would be devoted to and focused on these issues.

Adam Levy: 21:46

Do you have a sense of why so many of these issues had gone unchecked for so long at STRI?

Josh Tewkesbury: 21:52

These issues tend to stick in unfortunate places, unless you have fairly clear transparency and accounting mechanisms in place.

I think these issues are, you know, are not unique to STRI, they’re not even unique to field organizations.

But we do see them crop up pretty regularly when you combine a lot of you know, informal scientific instruction, a lot of engagement where you have, you know, power dynamics that create inequalities.

Adam Levy: 22:22

As you’ve alluded to, a lot of these issues aren’t unique to STRI. At the same time, do you think there were particular failings taking place at the institute?

Josh Tewkesbury: 22:34

At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where so much of our work is in the field, and where so much of it depends critically on mentor-mentee relationships, we did not have in place the systems of accountability and transparency that are required to support our community.

So those were failings. And I think we have addressed those over the past, you know, two years,

Adam Levy: 22:55

Can you really spell out them what kind of things you’ve been looking to change and put in place, which wasn’t there before?

Josh Tewkesbury: 23:02

First of all, we implemented and really strengthened a system called SI Civil, which was based on the National Institute of Health system for anti-harassment, in which there is never a time in which a report that comes in, sits on someone’s desk without a professional examining it.

And so that if I receive any complaints, it can’t sit on my desk, I immediately talk to them. In addition, like, transparency is all about multiple lines of communication, and making sure we meet people where they are, right.

So some people want to talk in a completely confidential manner. We made sure that there’s 24/7 capacity for people to talk in English or Spanish that allow confidential reporting.

And really focus on culture and systems change. So training, bystander training, training in safe space training, and learning how to listen effectively for signs that things aren’t going well between team members.

And then I guess the other part of it is just ensuring that our policies are super rock solid, right, so that we always, we have clean, clear policies on where people can stay and where they can’t.

We have clean, clear policies on how we protect individuals within our institution, how we support them.

In all it is a system that needed significant strengthening to support the community and it wasn’t in place five years ago, wasn’t even in place two to three years ago. It’s now in place.

You know, the other thing is, is that we have been working with, all the people that came forward for the BuzzFeed article. We’ve been talking with most of them, everyone who’s willing to talk, and engaging them in the process of how do we make STRI a more safe place, supporting them to be a part of the change themselves within the institution. And we’ve been just overwhelmed and really thankful with the degree to which those individuals have, have been willing to engage.

Adam Levy: 24:49

And are you actually seeing results from these kinds of changes? Could you give any examples of how these shifts have actually led to different outcomes over the last months or maybe a couple of years?

Josh Tewkesbury: 25:03

Part of this process was we also changed a lot of senior leadership, we had to. You know, our new HR lead is phenomenal, and she’s exceptionally well trusted in the community. And that was a change.

We had other key positions in leadership that we had to change because of, because of just their relationship to the old system and the lack of trust that had developed between leadership and the community.

And we desperately needed to re-establish that trust. I came in with the advantage of not being associated with the behaviours that we were really trying to combat. That, plus the BuzzFeed article, give me a remit for doing fairly large scale change, because no one could say that the old system was working.

Doing that work was the priority. And the results have been at first, yeah, a lot more people coming forward. And that’s great. But they weren’t being brought forward previously, because people didn’t have trust in leadership to take their issues seriously.

So once you establish that trust, you then have to you then have to double down on engaging each one of those issues, and resolving them rapidly, transparently and efficiently. And I think that trust is a lot further along today than it was two years ago. But I have no illusion that we’re done.

Adam Levy: 26:05

One of the key concerns around the handling of these issues is that when an alleged perpetrator does leave their post following an investigation, it’s often not shared in the institutions, what the circumstances of them leaving are, or indeed, if they’ve stepped down or been fired.

The concern is that this could enable an individual to continue collaborations or continue on to another institution. Is this specific concern being addressed at STRI?

Josh Tewkesbury: 26:34

It’s a huge issue. And it’s a systems failure. It’s very hard for an individual institution to tackle all of it. But we definitely have taken steps at STRI and at Smithsonian to confront these issues. And so let me just give you a few examples of sort of the challenges that we face in this area.

You know, we’re not conducting a criminal investigation where we make a decision to that someone should be removed from their position or should no longer work at the Smithsonian, We’re not, you know, in the business of saying someone is innocent or guilty, That’s for a criminal case, right?

If there’s no criminal case involved, then, you know, when we decide to terminate a contract with an employee, for whatever reason, as in many institutions, it is always easier for an employee to quit than it is for them to be fired.

This puts the organization in a challenging position, right, because we no longer…we can’t, you know, remove someone as fast as they can leave on their own accord.

The other challenge we face is, of course, we are not in a position of sort of making a blanket public statement. In fact, legally, we can’t around those issues, particularly if someone quits.

That said, what we can do and what we have done in the past and say, as an institution, we are no longer associated with this individual.

If you have concerns or you want further details about how that will affect your relationship with that individual, I am absolutely available to work through those on an individual basis with everyone.

The central piece of your question, an institution can’t solve the problem, given our current laws and regulations of a perpetrator going on to continue to cause damage and a new institution without support from institutions from outside of its walls. We can’t out people for bad behaviour publicly.

And we can’t do that for, for reasonable reasons. And yet, there is nothing worse from the standpoint of a survivor to see the person that perpetrated harm on them go on to get a job in another institution and continue to perpetrate harm on another set of victims.

And we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s up to institutions to think creatively together about how we support each other to ensure that that doesn’t take place. And it’s up to directors in my position and other directors around the world to ensure individually, we’re doing everything in our power within the rules and laws we are given, to ensure the safety of individuals within our institutions and far beyond them as well, to stop that from happening.

Adam Levy: 28:59

You’ve touched on the advantages you had coming into the institution at this critical time with a clean slate. On the flip side of that, did changing director at this moment allow anyone to effectively avoid being held responsible for failings at the institution?

Josh Tewkesbury: 29:18

It’s a great question. And the answer is, it’s hard to say. There’s no point in sort of running around talking about who was to blame fo,r you know, when we’re talking about people who are no longer there. And you know, who’s responsible for those systems failures.

My job is to make sure we clean them up, and to make sure they never happen again. But it’s not productive to go around and pointing fingers and saying, you know, “This person got away.”

Adam Levy: 29:41

What are your personal plans and maybe even your personal hopes for how STRI can continue to do better in the future and ensure the safety of the scientists who work there?

Josh Tewkesbury: 29:53

Being a scientist. It’s about being a leader, and there’s so many people that look up to science and to scientists, And the damage that can be done to an individual because of poor leadership or, or intentional harm, they are lifelong.

And the the ruin, not only individuals careers, but they ruin the practice process of science. So we have an obligation to ensure that doesn’t happen. And as an institution, I think we have reached a space where we’re committed to that obligation.

You know, you, it takes years to build trust, and it takes moments to break it. And so we’re on that trajectory of years. And I think for me, I’m committed to ensuring that this institution becomes the best version of itself, that supports people from all walks of life, and that people come to STRI because it is a model of how to do intense, cutting edge tropical field research in groups, in teams, safely, effectively in a just, equitable and inclusive environment.

Adam Levy: 30:53

That was Josh Tewkesbury. This is the last episode of this eight part podcast series, looking at freedoms, safety and responsibility in science.

A huge thank you to all those who shared their stories with us whether those experiences have been shaped by economic collapse, persecuted identity, or by conflict. We hope we’ll have a chance to return to some of these stories in future episodes.

We also have new series to come in 2023, including a celebration of team science, focusing on the many non-research roles who support the scientific enterprise.

We’ll also be looking at art and science collaborations and how to get them right.

But before I sign off, I wanted to leave you with a thought from climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, about the importance of freedom and safety in research.

Katharine Hayhoe: 31:50

Traditionally, in scientific culture, we’re socialized to be the brain in the jar, I feel like.

But what I’m convinced of increasingly is, of course, we want you know, science has to be objective, you have to be able to get the same results no matter who you are, no matter where you do it. That’s the essence of science.

But when we bring our whole self, to our science, when we bring who we are, what we care about, what we’re passionate about our identity, our heart, that’s when we really connect over what matters.

And so whoever we are, wherever we from, I see today, scientists bringing their whole selves to the table in ways that we were not able to, or we were not encouraged to, before.

And that gives me so much hope. Because when we put not only our heads, but our hearts and our souls and our hands into this, I really truly feel like that’s where science can change the world.

Adam Levy: 32:46

That’s it for this series. Until next time, I’m Adam Levy.