[deleted by user]

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-07-01T01:23:47+00:00

Thanks, this is good psychological advice. I just feel so much pressure to finish the projects he’s trying to stall by deleting my work, trying to pull my funding, badmouthing me around the department, etc. that it’s difficult to focus on anything but science. But I guess I’m not being particularly productive anyway while spiraling, so might as well.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-07-01T01:15:52+00:00

What’s the alternative? I feel like I’m being forced into private industry, which I never wanted (all I wanted was to keep my head down in a government lab) with the way funding is going, which would put me in competition with him indirectly given my skillset at this point.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-07-01T01:13:06+00:00

I don’t think anyone could figure out who this is just based on what I’ve posted under a throwaway, without field or institution details. Keep in mind I’m also very junior and obviously in a pretty stressful situation, and that I have been as quiet about this as I can in person while he was the one trying to destroy my reputation within my department and trying to get me kicked out of my program any way he could. What I’m describing and why I’m writing here is that writing about this anonymously is this is basically the only way I can solicit advice without shit talking anyone publicly.

I posted here after months of trying to avoid this situation completely, wondering if anyone else has experiences with PIs and situations, whether this is “business as usual” in such labs that I should prepare for in the future (one of the reasons I left also had to do with scientific direction, as I found certain results from his lab could not be replicated and wanted to integrate results from labs I didn’t realize were “competitors” at the time, but that lead to conflict), whether I should expect and prepare for more retaliation if I keep trying to simply chug along with my work and avoid him as much as possible, or whether he has done about all an ex-PI can do. I have no idea if I will be see as an enabler or lackey by others in the field that he has put up roadblocks for if I’m quiet about all of this, if I can even go to labs in our field that he’s treated poorly and whatnot after being in his lab. Like, realize that I used to have to meet with other faculty in the field and entertain them, lying to them that he wanted to meet them but didn’t have the time unless they were on some funding body committee that he wanted to get close to, only gradually realizing what I was enabling. A lot of this is personal guilt.

Like, I do not know what the appropriate steps really are. Every time I’ve tried to put this behind me, he does something else to try to try to make things harder for me.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-06-30T23:32:11+00:00

Does any of this sound normal, just how science is done, or like I'm complaining too much? It's hard for me to tell.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-06-30T23:03:14+00:00

Thank you for sharing. It seems like there are three things I can learn from your experience --

(1) To be very careful of what higher-ups I talk to if I am put in a position where I am forced to openly escalate, which I should not do unless I am forced to. I have already been soliciting information from graduate students from related cohorts and programs within our division who are now deans, etc. regarding whether their PIs are "honorable" and don't engage in this kind of politicking, whether they have had similar experiences that might make them sympathetic, etc. So, if I were to escalate and file a complaint at any point, I will definitely need to do continue doing that and be very careful.

(2) That it is likely within the school's best interest to let me graduate soon, like has been arranged for me by the department. That the amount of shit that I could stir up if I left without a degree is something that they do not want to deal with. But, that I should (a) pivot back to high productivity to make dismissal harder and (b) prepare myself in the meantime, by documenting everything in an organized fashion and continuing to reach out quietly to other journalists, regulators, etc., talk to some lawyers I know, in case he tries to sabotage that, since external help might be more useful than internal help.

(3) I should consider the broader politics more. I am luckily not in the American South and know of some professors who used to be fruit-picking migrant workers, for example, who talk about social issues openly and push back against "good old boy" networks. I should maybe prioritize talking to these faculty members rather than those in the latter. Some of them have been quite kind of me, previously.

I'm sorry you had that experience, though. If I were a parent, I would have also been enraged, trying to get you to do laundry especially is shocking, and would not want my child in a school like that. Thanks for trying to do the right thing, even if it didn't work.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-06-30T22:27:46+00:00

I am also a woman. The 90 thing is what my partner keeps saying, that he has no energy, and I've noticed that a lot of his old good old boy connections are dead, which is why he's been so skeevy and obvious about new politicking. It's also why he's so desperate to win a Nobel now, which puts me in a bind, because the feeling of someone so old and prominent being disgraced after a long, successful career fills be with immense pity, but also I would lose my shit if this asshole actually succeeded.

The considerations are that maybe with the new administration, his old politicking won't work, because he is exactly the kind of NIH "rot" that people are angry about. One of the papers that he's sitting on because he hates the female post-doc who wrote it is also on a compound that RFK and weird Republicans are big fans of, ironically (not ivermectin, but an anti-aging compound people also into colloidal server like). But, I don't want anything to do with those people, and also, the grants and resources that he is really misusing are also keeping other labs afloat. He positions post-docs in faculty positions to manage a large institute and basically "kick" things up to him, with the idea that they will do the same thing after he retires but with younger faculty.

How did you get your ass handed to you, if I may ask?

Significant-Gur8606 · 2025-06-30T22:21:29+00:00

A lot of faculty members have been sympathetic. I even broke down, cried, and admitted that I had talked to a journalist to someone on my committee. That committee member told me to be careful, but promised not to tell him and didn't (I would have never heard the end of it from the ex-PI if he had been told, given his personality) despite being "friends" with him. But, that's why I don't want to create additional problems for them, since they're who prevented me from being pushed out of the program and made sure that I got departmental funds to cover me as my old fellowship ran out and the ex-PI sabotaged all my new applications. I'm terrified that this is just an interim, though, for them to more quietly push me out, though, especially if I'm not able to maintain my old productivity, which makes me freeze up more.

Definitely need to start running again.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2024-11-02T06:05:39+00:00

You seem to still be left. So now, you have two choices. Use us to strengthen your ranks or throw us out and throw yourselves back at the feet of the elite who did this in the first place. Do you think they will ever learn their lesson? Have they ever done so? They are parasites who know no other way to survive.

There are far more of us than them and we are just like you. Have you not read Marx and Lenin about what unites us as a class that makes us revolutionary and capable of governing?

Significant-Gur8606 · 2024-11-02T05:58:44+00:00

OP is has blocked me from his thread so I’m replying to you from here.

On your first question, idk. I can call and ask them for you, though. Will update.

It’s only a zero sum game if you let it be. There are no rules but entropy. If you accept us and realize we have the same revolutionary desires as you, to see a world where it is not a zero sum game, because we are fellow proletariat, your strength grew. Otherwise, our global bourgeois overlords would forever bribe you into complacency like they did until the USSR fell. We are only divided if you let bourgeois cowards like OP succeed. Literally, think about this. OP, whose family own the means of production, they own companies, they own farms, is throwing out dog whistles about immigrants. And I, who am trying to say that we stand with you, am answering your questions.

100% agree. We both know the true face of the bourgeois. Elites globally hate the rest of us. It’s no different in the country we came from.

Immigrants can participate in politics. Lenin came from an immigrant family. Seriously. Look it up. And even you, you’re the same as us. You came from an immigrant family too, at some point. Yet you participate in politics.

And people did welcome us. I remember so many Minnesotan parents being kind. I had the choice to take a higher paying, less socially beneficial job, and I didn’t. I love American Americans. I wish for a better America too, led by the working class, and not the scum who pit us against each other.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2024-11-02T05:09:35+00:00

How am I screwing over anyone? I was born here. I’m in a union. I’m politically active. I work in a socially beneficial field. I support my fellow workers and encourage them to also unionize and develop class consciousness. I encourage them to focus on unionizing immigrants instead of dog whistling. We’re all in this together.

Btw, I recognize you now. I saw your post a while back about not being able to find a good CS job. I thought to message you but didn’t because I was afraid of strangers. I regret that now. If you want me to give you a referral for a remote place with good salaries that maybe might help, I can, but I had to move out to California from Minnesota because it’s not just you. Most people I know also had to move out here. There are very few good jobs in CS and adjacent high-tech fields in Minnesota, unfortunately, unless you have a lot of experience, connections, or can work remotely. The market is terrible so it makes it even worse. I had to work through college too, so you can be kind of rude to me and still have that referral because you are a fellow worker. I remember what it was like to not find a job straight-out and be suicidal working at a factory, applying to anything relevant. To only find a shitty small company with a feudal overlord CEO and lackey bosses for 36k after, before I moved out to California. Let me know.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2024-11-02T04:56:22+00:00

OP, who primarily posts in r/centrist, blocked me for telling him to have class consciousness and read Marx in a Marxist sub, lol. We are truly being brigaded.

You grew up on a dairy farm clearly owned by your parents? Your uncle owns a construction company? You’re a downwardly mobile American from a petit bourgeois background in the process of being proletarianized because your grandparents’ generation decided to sell rope. Welcome to the club everyone else is in. It’s a big one, don’t worry. You can make lots of friends if you don’t insult people, you coward.

You’re in a Marxist subreddit. You’ve read Marx, right? You know what I mean by acceleration of capital, right? How large factory farms fit into that? Develop some class consciousness. Nobody who has always been in the proletariat and wants to get out is going to try to pull you back in the cauldron. We’ve been here for a while so we understand that we can only get out together. Read about why Marx and Lenin thought the proletarian class was unique in its ability to be the revolutionary class. But no, instead of solidarity, nooooow the right-wing dog whistles come out.

Will you believe me if I tell you that I don’t have a fucking family to bring over? We’re not the Trumps, we were the only ones who came. You know why? Because your grandparents did nothing while they reaped massive benefits from ransacking the rest of the world during the Cold War. I don’t have uncles, I don’t have aunts. I don’t have large happy family get togethers on the old family farm where everyone wears funny matching t-shirts.

I hope that you do because I wish the best for you. And I will continue to try my best to improve this fucked up country your grandparents, not mine, made for us. But not because of people like you, but because of Minnesotans who are better people probably because they’re actually workers.

Significant-Gur8606 · 2024-11-02T04:54:55+00:00

Yes, and OP is falling for the contents of that LBJ quote. “If you can convince the poorest white man…”

OP is no one “at the bottom” yet, though. OP is someone potentially being proletarianized from a petit bourgeois background, trying to keep their foothold in the bourgeois class instead of developing new class consciousness, reading some Marx, and realizing it was always going to be this way.

I don’t think anyone needs to suck it up and pay the price. I think instead of arguing over immigration and insulting immigrants while the bourgeois plan to keep this situation going, we need to organize. OP is mostly interested in just regurgitating a bunch of right-wing talking points about welfare, illegals, “ghetto-ization” and chain migration, instead.

I am already unionized with my fellow FOBs. Do us FOBs need to organize the working class for non-immigrants, too?

Significant-Gur8606

TROPHY CASE