A good thirty years
Pauline Gagnon tells another, a different, horrifying story about Geoff Marcy.
I suspect that what has come out so far is only the tip of the iceberg. His inappropriate behaviour goes back a good thirty years, when he was teaching at San Francisco State University.
This is where I met him in 1985 when we both worked in the Physics and Astronomy Department while I was a Master’s student and a lecturer. It was well known that he had intimate relationships with several of his female students. But it is not the only aspect where I felt Marcy’s ethics were questionable.
In 1987, Marcy’s colleague in the search for exoplanets realized that he had handed her a revised copy of their joint grant proposal. On the copy Marcy had given her, both their names appeared, his as main investigator and hers, as co-investigator. But Marcy’s official copy, the one he had submitted to the funding agency, bore only his name.
She reported this to the department head, who fired her on the spot. Marcy was the rising star of his department. She then filed a formal complaint for professional misconduct against Marcy. But she was unable to recover her position and she left the field of astronomy.
Holy crap.
The department head deserves as much, if not more, censure for this as Marcy. If a line had been drawn under his behaviour towards female colleagues 30 years ago we might not be discussing him and the damage he has wrought now.
BTW, to the people who are saying ‘this’ is science. It’s not. It’s shitty human behaviour in general and within a societal sub-structure specifically that enables that shitty behaviour because of the power structure. ‘This’ behaviour plays out time and again in our lives in every workplace, club, place of worship, playground, sport or whatever. It’s a human disease and needs to be addressed at that level.
That’s insane.
I hope that department chair is in hell now. If I believed in hell.
It’s truly horrifying.
I’m tempted to ask “how on earth was it possible”… but I’m afraid that I know the answer.
This should give pause to those who say “There isn’t any of this going on in my school”. I would ask someone saying that, can you be sure?
I’m not sure why I find this so much more shocking than the sexual harassment, but I do.
Maybe it’s because this is how he founded the reputation that ended up protecting him against his sexual misconduct?
Maybe it’s because she had written documents proving he had stolen credit for her part of the work.
Samantha, yes. Exactly. Clearly he was already a rising star at that time, which is what gained him immunity from his colleagues complaint. However, it is also clear that he was not operating in a vacuum (excuse the pun) and that the colleague whose work he appropriated was right there with him. Had she been given the due credit and support at that time Marcy may well never have been quite as insulated from consequences as he proved to be. He would not have been the great finder of exo-planets, instead he would have been one of several…
One of the things I have long disliked about the academic power structure is they way in which it is very hard for a student to break free from the shadow of a lab or project head. Where it does happen it seems almost always because that lab or project head permits it. Sure, the work of the graduate and post-graduates is often built on the shoulders of the great one, but it frequently eclipses the original work as well. Yet the great one still garners the lions share of the praise.
I understand why this system has developed and is maintained (the constant battle for patronage and funding in a world where science is always under funded and undervalued), but I don’t like it. It harms all those who lack power, which generally counts doubly so for women and other minorities.