This is the second part of the mini-series on toxic labs, dealing with how to spot these workplaces during or after the interview. As always, please let me know in the comments what you think and if you have any other points to add! Thanks! This video has profited a lot from input I received on twitter/mastodon. Interested in the first part? you can find it here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VUXz9EJMAbo.html
Excellent! I didn't do any of these and neither trusted my gut feeling, so ended up in a very toxic lab after previous lucky experiences with only nice and supportive labs. Sadly, I was not alone and met a lot of undergrads, PhD, and postdocs sharing similar experience. Since then, I've became a "non-toxic lab advocate" and a mentor, helping academics in their future lab search.
Hi and good morning. I have a PhD, done my first postdoc and currently doing the second one. I thoroughly appreciated your video. I just have one thought in mind. This kind of behaviour from PIs should be criminalised and pointed out as the problem, rather than advising the students how not to pick the worng group. This kind of speech is similar to what women have to hear all the time when they get raped. They should have dressed better? Not really. So, I think that the Academic community should really start stop tolerating this kind of behaviour, as this is a misconduct punishable by law. I would really like to see people from Academia speaking up against PIs and schooling them about what they should do, rather than helping students to avoid some type of lab that we know exists and will always exist. Anyway, I truly liked the video and I think it is really useful and my comment is not intended as a criticisms against yourself.
Hi, thanks for writing. I agree with your sentiment completely. To be sure, some types of behavior are illegal and therefore can do lead to dismissal from a job (probably too rarely), but it is just not punishable by law to be a jerk...for this we need other mechanism of 'punishment' or academic disincentives that would need to be instituted with very clear guidelines. I think that's very possible. It would need a bit of an institutional paradigm shift away from just valuing bringing in grant money and publishing high-impact papers. These things are easy to quantify, mean income to the institution, and are thus popular, while being a decent human is more complicated to measure.
If only I could have seen videos like this before I start my PhD journey. I'm with toxic PI who is a extreme narcissist, has zero interest in his students, just all-time being maniac about his childish persona. Glad that I persieted and graduated with my PhD. I'm currently struggling to get out of this environment and find a postdoctoral position that is non-toxic and at least normal! Thank you so much for your video!
Thanks so much for writing, and I am glad you found the video useful, at least as much as it can be at this point. I am sorry you had to go through this experience, and I hope you will have a better experience with your postdoc.
I wish I had seen something similar to your Toxic Lab playlist before starting graduate school. Now, I've changed my lab to get away from my toxic labmates and lab culture. It was extremely difficult and messy to quit.
Thank you for making this video, it is very helpful. Is there any potential for another video that covers what do to if you’ve found yourself in a toxic lab? Topics such as switching labs, leaving a lab, getting help from graduate student unions, and reporting toxic behavior to the university as well as the potential impacts these actions may have would be helpful. Thank you again for your videos. Cheers
