The director of the US National Institutes of Health says the agency will begin revising its policies on harassment next year.
Nearly 40% of women trainees polled by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) between January and March 2019 reported being sexually harassed at work.
NIH is to be commended for this plan. We need other funding bodies and institutions to make similar moves. Sexual harassment in research is unacceptable, should be considered research misconduct and we shouldn’t be lauding the achievements of harassers.
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The elite panel also reviewed a long-awaited report commissioned by the NIH that charged the agency to work rapidly stop sexual harassment in science labs. But agency watchers who have pressed the NIH to act for more than a year were left without a clear timeline for changes.
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“It’s no longer time to consider — it’s time to act,” says Scout, deputy director of the US National LGBT Cancer Network and a member of the Working Group on Changing the Culture to End Sexual Harassment, which prepared the report.
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