Abuse at the Max-Planck Institutes in Germany

Academic institutes on the whole are extremely unusual beasts with a range of abusive relationships fueling their success. That's usually students and lecturers, but staff on fixed length contracts and heads of departments are no better. It's always a power dynamic issue and those who are committing the abuse has never had anyone say, this is bad and not acceptable. Also those in charge at universities seem to rarely be at risk of losing their job, whilst those being abused can lose their opportunity in a moment.

Main news for me here is that this is (still?) considered newsworthy in Germany.

At top US universities, I’ve been threatened with deportation, yelled at, prevented from going to faculty job interviews, credit to my work removed, papers highjacked and my name removed after I developed the initial idea and the break-thru analysis, etc.

There is no way out: you’re relying on supporting letters of reference from your advisors at least until you’re tenured. Your advisor doesn’t like you? Congrats, he can easily destroy your career before it even started.

Unter den Talaren..