Resilience in a research environment is a surprising discovery. When you acquire it the hard way, you are still there, standing upright, but your strength has a different flavour. It no longer comes from sheer determination, but from something deeper – a truth forged through years of looking inward and outward, and a clarity of mind about what research environments should never do to individuals, no matter how badly wires get crossed (accidentally or otherwise) about where merit and integrity lie.
This is a story about what happens when power, vulnerability and gender collide – and how easily institutions abandon the very people they task with holding everything together, in order to cover for their own weaknesses and mistakes. It is a textbook case of institutional gaslighting.
I was supposed to lead a team. I was, in fact, contractually required to – as principal investigator of a multimillion-euro European project. That came with legal obligations: I was to run the scientific project, manage data integrity, allocate authorship, ensure scientific standards. My job was to lead. To decide. To move forward. To protect the science.
Instead, I became the subject of a scientific misconduct and moral harassment investigation.
Not for fraud. Not for acts of violence or rudeness. But for doing my job – in a manner that is surprisingly similar to what I have since observed in my male colleagues. Just a little bit softer. A little bit less direct – women sense that invisible line they have to avoid crossing.
Let me explain. Three doctoral students – all funded, at least in part, by a European project I was leading, including two in a romantic relationship – defended their PhDs with published papers and more to come. Then they left the lab. They disagreed with my decisions: authorship order, analysis strategies, reviewer response strategies and ownership of data and code. Standard tensions in any lab, the investigator ended up saying. Strange. I hadn’t encountered these “standard tensions” before – not in 20 years of training multiple generations of scientists. I tried to resolve the tensions transparently. That was my mistake.
I was accused of asking too much – though no more than what peer reviewers require: additional analyses, clearer methods, stronger validation. Of delaying publications – while they themselves resisted these revisions. Of depriving them of their work – though they left the lab without requesting or saving copies of their datasets or scripts. Of accessing their analyses on the funded project without permission – while they had already blocked server access and refused to transfer project files. Of failing to acknowledge one complainant’s contributions – despite his inclusion in multiple collaborations and publications.
There was no mediation. No effort to clarify misunderstandings, no space for truth-testing or restorative dialogue. The internal inquiry launched by my institution – at the students’ request – took these claims and ran with them. The tone of the investigation report bordered on surreal. My scientific achievements, my team management, even the number of people I had trained, were reinterpreted as red flags. My publication record? Evidence that I had pressured students – though several have remained in academia. My funding success? Framed as unfair advantage – as if I’d taken more than I deserved or deprived others of funding. My training track record? Simply deemed implausible. Everything became evidence of misconduct.
I was (mis)judged accordingly by the investigator. He deemed me controlling – for managing a project. I was rigid – for following the rules. I was manipulative – for fuelling the team with energy and ambition. I was obviously guilty – for questioning the investigator’s inconsistencies. I was aggressive – for citing policies and procedures.
Invisible were my weekends spent rescuing manuscripts and cleaning datasets, my family holidays spent correcting drafts or debugging analyses on the road between lullabies or conversations about my eldest child’s first heartbreak or her existential questions. Or worse, they became proof of incompetence, in the investigator’s view. After all, nobody else works overtime in academia, do they?
My competence was reframed by the investigator as manipulation – or usurpation. Meanwhile, one complainant was allowed to present himself as the visionary originator of collaborations I had initiated, of projects I had launched. He was the misunderstood rising star. I was the authoritarian obstacle. He filed a second complaint, demanding greater authorship recognition. I – along with the majority of co-authors – requested external mediation. It was denied. logs didn’t support his authorship claims, but no matter – the integrity investigator knew best.
Also dismissed were the detailed letters of support from people who had worked with me for years. Some were attempting to continue aspects of the research that had been disrupted by the complainants’ failure to cooperate. Others had already left the lab – no longer under my supervision, with no motive to defend me beyond their own conviction that I was being unfairly smeared. The spontaneity of their support was “questionable”, wrote the investigator. They insisted. They reached out to institutional leadership just to ask to be heard. Yet, still, they were met with condescension from the investigator overseeing the case: lectured on what defending a PhD requires – and doesn’t. “All it takes is one paper to get started in academia. Your PI is lying to you, making you believe otherwise.” I was brainwashing them – if only they’d wake up from my influence. Meanwhile, as I continue to sit on PhD juries, I’m still looking for that one-paper thesis.
?
The case against me was weak, but the central institution and broader system were under pressure to be tougher on research fraud. Hence, the investigator needed to solidify it by making the facts fit with his personal intuition. He was allowed to act with unchecked and, ultimately, unacceptable power. Never contradict an investigator: I learned that the hard way. And don’t ask why the investigation wasn’t handled by a committee, or why no one involved came from my research field.
When some of the team members contacted him to voice their concerns about how the case was handled, he ended the meeting by urging them to consider filing a formal complaint against me for moral harassment (I was lucky though – they knew better than to do so). Meanwhile, the couple who filed the complaints were treated as fully independent voices, and their perceptions were accepted as truth. Their repetition of the same accusations – scientific misconduct and moral harassment – against another PI (yes, another woman) in another country, a year later, was never considered relevant to my case. That time, the escalation reached the next level: data and analyses were deleted from university servers. And once again, the violence was reversed – the PI had to prove that the missing work had, in fact, existed.
I had warned the investigator early on that my actions were driven by a responsibility to protect research output. I sent documents, emails, timelines, logs. The final report mentioned none of it, nor the team’s support, nor the lies or manipulations I could expose. Rules, contracts, regulations – who cares? And who cares that the report’s conclusions were tenuous at best. Certainly not the institution that claims to uphold scientific standards. I was born a sinner. QED.
The findings? There was a “congratulations again” email message from me – apparently evidence that I had coerced a student into taking a training course on my behalf. Never mind that I was helping her redirect her research after she expressed concerns about continuing her initial project.
There was the claim that I had deliberately breached doctoral school supervision quotas because a co-supervisor was deemed “fictitious” – even though he had had meetings with the students and no warnings about his supposed lack of involvement had ever been issued, either by students or the doctoral school.
Finally, there was my decision to restrict the complainants’ access to lab data following a server security breach and, later, during the investigation (after they had already left the lab). This was labelled as misconduct, even though it was explicitly supported by the administrative grant office. The investigator imposed unrestricted access to the lab server by the complainants, jeopardising its security. And if anything had happened – guess who would have been held accountable? Not the investigator.?
There was no formal sanction. Just career paralysis. Soft cancellation. I was denied by the central administration the opportunity to run for the direction of my institute, for instance, despite a favourable closed vote from my colleagues. Off the record, I was told I was a reputational risk.
The official statement did acknowledge that I am very organised. It reminded me of when, as a teenager, my school didn’t enter me for the national mathematics Olympiads. My teacher explained that I wasn’t a great mathematician: I was just hard-working. My school director – a woman – stepped in. She backed me, and I made it to the international Olympiads; only one other student from my school made it through with me. And here I am, a senior researcher – still framed merely as the hard-working girl.
I kept hoping that someone, somewhere, would see through the fog. But the fog only thickened. A postdoc stopped working on the project he was hired for, ignored HR, defied the unit director, denied my authority – and then requested to work with the original male complainant instead. Just like that. And later, he refused to return copies of his work, even after a formal institutional request. Just like that. Another colleague – someone I had supported with funding – decided it was the perfect moment to join the chorus. He claimed I had stolen a position that “should have been his” and asked for me to be demoted so he could fill it.
This is the moment that you, the reader, begin to hesitate: If so many people say something’s wrong…maybe there is something. And that’s exactly where the trap closes. The more irrational it gets, the more your voice weakens. The more disproportionate the accusations, the more people assume you must have done something wrong. And suddenly, it’s your competence that’s in question.
And here I am, still trying to bring that contested research to publication. Data I once believed in is now saturated with dread. Every time I reopen the files, I flinch – not at the work itself, but at every memory it holds. The science hasn’t changed. But I have. What used to be clarity is now doubt. What used to be purpose is now laced with grief. This is what harassment does. It doesn’t just attack your status – it colonises your voice, corrodes your confidence and turns your own contributions into hostile terrain.
Yet somehow, you’re expected to keep producing – as if nothing had happened, as if everything you built hadn’t just been dismissed by more deserving individuals. And maybe the worst part is the question that keeps resurfacing: what’s the point of working so hard, for so long, if someone else can walk in and claim the fruits as their own?
That’s how it is. Women in science don’t just have to be twice as good for half the recognition – they have to be three times as skilled to be acknowledged as competent, and three times as careful to be considered credible. And even then, their work can still be dismissed as impossible or credited to others.
Don’t misunderstand me – I’ve never excluded collaborators. My idea of science is rooted in openness, collaboration, inclusion, respect, rigour and merit. Nor should this essay be read in any sense as a rant against PhD students. I remain deeply grateful to all the students and postdocs I have supervised who stood by me, each in their own way – as well as to all the colleagues who understood what was at stake.
What I’m decrying is collaborators excluding me from the very project I designed, secured and built – with the warmest institutional understanding extended to them as they did it.
Before all this happened to me, I had a clear sense of what scientific integrity meant – and of the grey zones we all sometimes debate with colleagues at conferences or in the margins of working life. After three years of being investigated, that clarity is gone. I no longer share my enthusiasm with my students – once one of my greatest strengths – for fear of seeming too pushy. I no longer pass on my scientific rigour – another of my strengths – for fear of being too demanding.
What remains is a dull, blunt version of mentorship: every working meeting recorded, every exchange archived – just in case I ever need to prove I meant no harm. And even then, I expect that the proof won’t hold. Because what counts is the narrative. And some narratives have a louder voice than others.
What keeps running through my mind – and what lies at the core of why I’m writing this piece – is this: what exactly are we teaching the next generation of researchers? That integrity is a matter of perspective, not of facts? That worth is self-proclaimed, no matter the contribution? That equality is conditional – and easily set aside when inconvenient?
The lesson of my case for any ambitious young doctoral student in STEM would appear to be that if your PI is a woman – especially if she’s senior, visible and respected – file a complaint. Evidence is optional, but make sure you use the right words. Loss of trust. Lack of expertise. Control. Emotional distress. Intellectual property. Just stir the affective soup. It works – far better than it should.
I see now that I was never fit for the role of principal investigator. I had succeeded too much, too visibly, as a woman in a male-dominated STEM field. For that, I offer my sincerest apologies. I should never have stepped outside my assigned female role: endlessly generous, nurturing, self-effacing. I should have known I was never entitled to rigorous science, visionary drive or enthusiastic leadership.
Perhaps most ironic of all: this happened in an institution whose very mission is to produce knowledge. A place filled with experts in science and the humanities – and yet utterly blind to the power games, implicit biases and structural asymmetries that thrive in hierarchical environments. The research is clear. The data exists. The papers are published. But when it comes to applying that knowledge to individual cases, the institution behaves as if it never existed.
While this essay is emotionally contained, I want to be clear: this journey took me to very dark places within myself. Nor should my containment be read as coldness, lack of empathy or self-absorption. It should be read as it would be if I were male: as a sign of strength and leadership. After all, here I am, still standing, still thinking. Resilience is a wonderful thing. But it shouldn’t have to be earned through institutional erosion.
One male colleague recently told me that he didn’t understand how a PI could be refused the right to lead his or her own project. That’s exactly the point: he doesn’t understand – because, as a man, he will likely never face this kind of situation, even if he may face other kinds of adversity.
So the question is no longer about me. It’s about us. What will the academic community do about these double standards – the quiet biases and coded readings that, taken one by one, seem negligible but, when compounded, fracture lives and derail careers?
The author is a senior scientist at a European public research institute. To contact her, email anonymous.scientist19@gmail.com.
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