[HN Gopher] Abuse of power at Germany's elite research instituti...
___________________________________________________________________
Abuse of power at Germany's elite research institution [video]
Author : Koaisu
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-03-16 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
| sa-code wrote:
| Is there any established literature on accountability?
|
| I'm interested in how to bake accountability into an
| organization. I don't like the idea of using whistleblowing as a
| crutch because things have to get really bad for someone to blow
| the whistle.
| pstuart wrote:
| I've long been interested in this as well.
|
| Daylight is the best disinfectant -- having goals, non-goals,
| budgets, and expenses as publicly auditable data is a good
| place to start.
|
| Going deeper, I've had this notion of making a hybrid
| communication/documentation tool that embeds micro contracts
| that can be audited. Easily solved by ye olde HN simple weekend
| project ;-)
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I'm not sure if there is any literature to this effect, but an
| institutional arrangement that has known flaws is one in which
| peers nominate future peers for membership. Academia is an
| example of this arrangement.
|
| When evaluating whether an institution is accountable, a good
| default question to ask is, "Is power plural?" In the
| terminology of the American political order, this is called
| checks and balances. It's not perfect, but a system of
| overlapping institutions, whose members are chosen by a
| plurality of methods and from a plurality of backgrounds, and
| which have oversight over each other in a loop, are more
| accountable than unitary institutions.
|
| I'm sure some have attempted to answer this analytically,
| basically making a "directed power graph" to measure how plural
| power is, and then correlating that with measures of
| accountability such as corruption perceptions. This is a huge
| topic and the second paragraph is my opinion, but that's
| because I think that's what such an analysis would show.
| throw627357 wrote:
| Max Planck is not accountable in this respect simply because it
| so far hasn't needed to be.
|
| They are good at external scientific evaluations, and regularly
| ace them. Culturally, that's the only thing that matters to
| this institution.
|
| They do not have a non scientific supervisory board, they don't
| think they need that, because it's all about the science. What
| you call abuse, they call dedication to the cause of advancing
| human knowledge.
|
| However, this type of reporting is extremely dangerous to them.
| One of the most valuable resources to them is highly skilled,
| motivated and driven applicants for positions at all levels.
|
| The more this gets out into the light, the more they will need
| to build the organizational culture to actually do something
| real about it.
|
| That said, so far, these things are very easy for them to wait
| out. Very few victims speak out, because either that puts an
| end to their career, or they are happy to have put that time
| long behind themselves.
| throw627357 wrote:
| I personally know all about it, having spent many years in that
| system.
|
| _Warning, long comment. Skip forward to the paragraph starting
| in "Where it becomes specific to Max Planck" if you already
| understand the psychological roots of toxic work environments in
| academia._
|
| Some of this is due to the psychology of the scientific mentor-
| mentee relationship, which has toxic elements nearly everywhere.
|
| Essentially, you have young, highly ambitious people fresh out of
| college, who dream of achieving big things in science.
|
| They go work for people who have achieved everything they dream
| of, and who have been successful to a degree only one in
| thousands of young grad students will ever be. (That's literally
| the odds if you go work for a Max Planck director.)
|
| The supervisors also happen to have the power to waste many years
| of the grad student's life - a power only comparable to being
| able to hand out long prison sentences on a whim.
|
| This alone is a social situation perfectly suited to generate
| abuse and toxicity. The worst supervisors will cynically take
| advantage of the situation. The best ones only will have been
| corrupted by years of bootlicking and pandering into thinking of
| themselves as the second coming of Christ.
|
| Up to here, this is a structural problem common to all elite
| research institutions.
|
| Where it becomes specific to Max Planck is in its so-called
| Harnack principle, a principle that essentially codifies a cult
| of genius, making it the explicit goal of the society to give
| nearly limitless financial freedom and executive power to the
| institute's independent directors and putting the entire
| organization into these individual's service.
|
| This principle turns that ostensibly modern institution into a
| time capsule of late 19th century Germany, a Wilhelminian relic.
| It's poignant and fitting that the society was renamed from
| Emperor Wilhelm Society after the war.
|
| That this institution specifically is the crown jewels of German
| science is truly a danger to the standing of German science in
| the world. Because the society is completely 'democratically' run
| by its directors, who profit fantastically from the status quo,
| and due to the near complete lack of accountability and
| oversight, it is unable to reform.
|
| The moment people speak up against this system, their career is
| over - making it very easy and convenient for the society to
| ignore those voices as "anonymous". Of course they are! The fact
| that we hear about this anyway, every few years, over decades,
| should tell you all you need to know.
| tg180 wrote:
| This isn't just a problem specific to German academia, it
| extends across the entire European academic landscape.
|
| I've always wondered why professors and supervisors, after
| experiencing these abuses themselves, continue to perpetuate
| them.
|
| The only explanation I've come up with is that the system
| naturally weeds out those who resist or speak up by stalling
| their careers. As a result, it selects for individuals who
| don't make trouble, those who passively obey and endure even
| the worst forms of dysfunction.
|
| In the end, this leads to the normalization of abuse, with
| people rationalizing it as "if I went through it, others should
| too", a way to protect their own ego.
|
| The only thing even worse is when the abuse turns passive-
| aggressive: denying opportunities without ever saying it
| outright, hostility disguised as kindness, ambiguous and
| demoralizing feedback, delaying responses, making people miss
| crucial deadlines, assigning pointless or overwhelming tasks.
| They excel at this too.
|
| If I ever had children, I would never let them attend a
| European university.
| throw627357 wrote:
| > I've always wondered why professors and supervisors, after
| experiencing these abuses themselves, continue to perpetuate
| them.
|
| From their perspective, it's simply about the ends justifying
| the means.
|
| You've learnt that relentless pressure and extreme demands,
| to an extent that elsewhere in society we would call highly
| abusive, produce results - they did for you, or you wouldn't
| be there.
|
| This goes as far as rationalizing offensive personal insults
| as helpful tools - negative feedback can be very motivating
| to a driven person.
|
| (That's not something I made up, I heard that point made
| nearly verbatim from a famous Max Planck director.)
| rockyj wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is not just applicable to Europe, this is
| applicable in a lot of places in the world. Imagine this in a
| hierarchical, subversive, "elders are always right" societies
| in Asia (or South Asia).
| disattention wrote:
| This exists in the US as well. I've personally experienced
| and witnessed it happen within labs at an R1 University. The
| accountability structures are woefully insufficient to
| protect students and junior researchers, and the incentives
| are perverse as to actually reinforce the practice.
|
| I've seen frequently that talented technical contributors are
| academically handicapped because they bring too much value to
| the lab for them to graduate quickly. I've personally had my
| own funding threatened if I didn't work "at least 60 hours
| each week" on my ex-advisors work (which was in no way
| related to my degree or research interests). I was fortunate
| to find another advisor and funding source quickly, but most
| advisors are absolutely profiting in their career off the
| backs of their students; leveraging both carrot and stick to
| fuel their ambition. It's a problem of modern academia and
| I'm not sure how to fix it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-16 23:01 UTC)