Academic science has a hierarchy problem

Sexual harassment, IP fraud, and slowed progress have the same root cause

This is the first of a series of essays focused on enhancing scientific progress by rethinking how we do academic science. Throughout my fellowship with the Roots of Progress Institute, I will be writing several more. Thank you to Mike Riggs for assistance editing this essay and to other RPI fellows for valuable feedback.

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At the start of July, members of the Panda lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies were called into a meeting with HR. We were told that our lab head, Professor Satchin Panda, was resigning. He hadn’t been on campus for almost a month before that, and many of us were already aware that he was under investigation for sexual misconduct and workplace bullying. The report from that investigation persuaded the Salk Executive Leadership Team to remove Panda from the institute. Science reported a small portion of the allegations last month.

The Panda lab was a behemoth. Over 20 scientists across different levels of hierarchy, all working on different areas of circadian biology, producing our best work and funnelling it upwards towards Dr Panda, the “principal investigator”, or PI. From the perspective of the PI, a large lab is a sweet deal: more hands, more work, and it all gets credited to the same professor sitting atop the hierarchy. This structure concentrates scientific prestige and allows such a PI to win more and more grants, backed by a greater volume of scientific output. In turn, more and better junior scientists apply to the lab, since a well-funded lab offers safer employment and the ability to do grander, more exciting experiments.

Meanwhile, a raw deal is sometimes being struck inside the hierarchy of such labs.¹ Junior scientists frequently conceive of the projects and almost always do all the benchwork. They’re the ones constantly ideating, experimenting, interpreting, and iterating. They’re doing actual science and driving progress in their field. They occasionally report their findings to the PI (the larger the lab, the less frequently this occurs), but most useful feedback comes directly from peers who are also in the physical lab space or involved with the experiments. Eventually, the junior scientist analyses all their data, prepares scientific figures, and writes a manuscript. The PI takes this product, edits it, and writes a cover letter to a journal editor excitedly sharing what “we” have discovered.

Many are under the impression that the famous X-ray crystallograph “photo 51” that helped to corroborate Crick and Watson’s proposed structure for DNA was Rosalind Franklin’s, and that she was robbed of credit. In actuality, her PhD student Raymond Gosling took the image, yet even fewer people know his name. Some PIs thrive on this uncertainty of credit—falsely claiming undeserved credit for discoveries is surprisingly commonplace.² It always amuses me to see PIs, when presenting some of their underlings’ research at a conference, get stumped mid-presentation because they are unfamiliar with the experiments and data on their slides. PIs assuming co-inventorship on patents, despite not contributing intellectually to the inventions, can be another part of the tacit deal of working within the academic hierarchy. I have even read of a professor publishing a book that blatantly plagiarised their Master’s student’s thesis (a year-long tribunal by the university in question ended only with the promise that future editions of the book would include a citation for the thesis—not even a slap on the wrist for the professor).

The deal isn’t completely one-sided, though. By complying with this hierarchy and handing over partial credit for their work, junior scientists are rewarded with the handsome prize of a Letter of Recommendation—the golden ticket to an independent research position (i.e., becoming a PI themselves). The LoR is one of the levers of power that can be pulled by a particularly manipulative PI. Others include access to a network of collaborators, permission to spend research money on research, permission to attend conferences, reputation manipulation, and the ability to publish. The PI gatekeeps all of these things and, by doing so, can exert complete control over the careers of the junior scientists beneath them.

A professor rewards a well-behaved underling with a Letter of Recommendation

Young scientists might be attracted to do a Master’s, PhD, or postdoc by the promise of being able to pursue their curiosity with freedom, independence, and creativity—and yet they will encounter a feudal hierarchy wherever they go. Of course, it takes a certain kind of personality to actually exploit this structure. Most PIs, by my assessment, treat lab members collegially. Good PIs actually work with graduate students and postdocs on projects and ideas, and play a much more active role in the entire scientific process from conception to publication. Most PIs are genuinely good mentors, and the verticality of the hierarchy dissipates over time as its levers of power go unutilised. I’ve had the good fortune of experiencing this side of academic science, too.

And yet, abuse still happens. Sexual harassment and bullying are the obvious manifestations of the exploitation of the academic hierarchy. As previously mentioned, plagiarism and patent fraud are also structurally enabled. Scientific fraud (i.e., faking data) can rear its ugly head too in such an environment—incentivised by top-down pressure and a lack of independence (and, therefore, accountability) at the bottom. More common than all of these, though, is the silent exit of talented young scientists from academia altogether. Here, the victim is scientific progress itself.

Over the years, countless smart, creative, hardworking young scientists have found themselves, through no fault of their own, in a lab led by a megalomaniac who extracts their toil, siphons their creativity, and crops their independence. Good ideas from the young scientists in this situation are disincentivised—either not credited appropriately or simply ignored. If the young scientist is stubborn in their independence and defies the hierarchy, their LoR will be tarnished, and their advancement to the next career stage is quashed. If the young scientist submits to the enforced hierarchy and endures by manufacturing a “good” working relationship with this kind of PI, there’s a good chance they will voluntarily leave academic science to get as far away from such an environment as possible afterwards. In either scenario, a career’s worth of potential discoveries is lost.

“Choose your PI carefully” is advice commonly given in academic research, but young scientists rarely have the tools or information to do so. Honest and unbiased opinions of manipulative PIs are hard to come by. Too often, the trajectory of one’s career, therefore, comes down to the luck of the draw. That there are would-be Curies, Sangers, Gurdons, and Doudnas that have silently slipped through the net simply by way of bad luck is a tragedy.

This is a problem worth solving. In addition to empowering victims of abuse to come forward earlier and telling young scientists to do a better job of screening their future PIs or brushing up on patent law, we should look to address the structural root cause. We should remove the levers of power that maintain the hierarchy. I have some suggestions.

Firstly, we should abolish the Letter of Recommendation. In its current form, the LoR mainly reflects how well the PI and the trainee get along, and how good the PI is at wordsmithing. For such an unobjective document, it holds remarkable sway among funding bodies. Professors on Faculty Search Committees have told me this is the single most important facet of faculty applications during initial screening. But candidates for faculty positions or fellowships should be assessed purely on their academic output and research vision, not on how much they pleased their previous boss. If prior workplace reputation is to be assessed, then LoRs from fellow lab members or mentees would surely prove more informative and valuable.

Secondly, lab size should be capped. Large labs primarily serve the PI and can take away from the junior scientists. An analysis of almost 400 life sciences labs in the UK found that larger labs produce more research output, but with diminishing returns—publications per PI grow, while publications per person shrink. Meanwhile, a 2025 study of multiple scientific fields internationally found that the increased success of junior scientists trained in large labs is conditional on their survival in academia, but the dropout rate from these labs is significantly higher than from small labs. A higher dropout rate likely stems from worse and less mentorship: it is impossible for a PI to mentor twenty people with the same effort and attention as they would five.

Beyond just the mentee’s experience, smaller labs are better for science. They have been shown to produce more deeply researched and disruptive science compared to larger labs, which mainly iterate on the science du jour. Two of the world’s most elite research institutions, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Cambridge, UK) and the Janelia Research Campus (VA, USA), have historically capped their labs at six people per PI. These labs could exist at such institutions because funding was assured, but asking other small labs to compete against large labs for funding is a tall order. This is why funders should implement the size cap. If lab size can no longer mask scientific quality, as it currently does, the funding landscape will become more meritocratic.

Thirdly, to flatten the hierarchy and promote a more collaborative relationship between PI and junior scientist, I would mandate that PIs devote some of their time towards actual lab work. Critics of academic institutions complain that power has shifted from researchers to administrators. This may be true, but the same has happened within academic labs. Over the years, the PI’s role has become more managerial and administrative and less scientific and experimental. Physically working at the bench (or coding, for computational work) alongside one’s PhD students would create a better mentorship environment and make the PI more deserving of the credit that they are already claiming when publishing papers. It would also prevent PIs from becoming out of touch with technical advancements and experimental realities. Knowing what scientific questions are worth asking is informed by knowledge of how you can answer them. This change would also likely reduce scientific fraud, which frequently emerges because PIs aren’t experimentally savvy enough to spot data-massaging from a Machiavellian junior scientist. It’s no coincidence that Bell Labs, arguably the most productive research institute ever, insisted its PIs stayed active in the lab and championed the “supervisor-as-a-peer” approach.

Finally, and most importantly, we should create avenues for PhD students and postdocs to receive independent research funding. As things stand, studentships and fellowships only cover young scientists’ salaries, not their full research costs. A junior scientist with their own research funding could take more accountability for their research. More skin in the game would increase motivation. Trainees would also learn to budget for themselves before they become responsible for an entire lab’s budget. Training the next generation of PIs to be fiscally responsible with taxpayer or donor money would surely pay back dividends down the line.

Independent funding also unlocks independent publishing. If a PhD student wishes to write a literature review (which involves no experiments) in their spare time, they should be able to publish it themselves. Currently, a few thousand dollars in article processing charges prevents this, as does lack of precedence and a culture of submission to hierarchy. The ability to attend and present at conferences would also no longer be gatekept if registration and travel funds don’t have to be granted by the PI. The experience of the student or the postdoc would improve massively, but the upshot for scientific progress is also immense. We would likely see more moonshot, high-risk, high-reward ideas tested. Younger people tend to be more risk-tolerant in general, and removing the need to get approval for every expensive reagent order would speed up science and reduce the chance of risk aversion creeping in with each additional decision-maker up the hierarchy.

It is easily within the realm of possibility for philanthropic and federal funding bodies to stop using the LoR, fund only labs below a certain size, and offer semi-independent studentships and fellowships with research funding included. To decentralise research funding at zero cost, money could be directed away from grants that normally go to massive labs (which pay the research costs of the trainees currently anyways), and awarded directly to the trainees themselves. Alternatively, funding mechanisms like the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programmes, which promote collaboration between academic researchers and private startups, could solicit applications from PhD students and postdocs directly. SBIR and STTR do not require a LoR and do not require faculty status, but most institutions treat them like other faculty-level grants. By simply advertising them to “non-independent” scientists, federal agencies like the NIH could fund trainees to work independently with startups while the PI mentors and advises them.³

In his recent report, Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, emphasised the need to “prioritize the individual scientist over legacy institutions” and to “invest directly in American researchers and the bold ideas that drive them”. Most American researchers have zero independence to pursue (and retain full credit for) any bold ideas that they might have. I agree that we should prioritise the individual scientist. We can massively expand our scientific creativity while disincentivising abuse if we simply expand the working definition of “scientist” beyond just the PI.

1. It should be noted that large, hierarchical labs certainly don’t make up a majority of academic research labs, but they swallow up a significant plurality of junior scientists.

2. The lack of accountability and proper attribution for work that the academic hierarchy creates can work both ways. It is not uncommon for PhD students to arrive in a lab where the PI has already conceived of and planned a salient project. The student then goes through the motions and is rewarded as the first author of a high-impact paper--one which they contributed none of the required creativity for. This is one of the ways in which some PhDs can be far easier than people assume.

3. This would tie in nicely with the government’s recent push to promote partnership between academia and private industry. The NSF announced last month that they are putting $47 million towards a new pilot PhD programme whereby the student spends half their time with a company and half with the academic institute. Unlocking the SBIR/STTR for students would have a similar effect of deepening cross-sector collaboration, but also promote more entrepreneurism and dynamism by funding scientists that aren’t yet locked into the tenure-track career path.