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The National Academy of Sciences is headed this week towards a policy change that would allow it for the first time to expel members who violated its code of conduct, including in cases of sexual harassment .
The group members, who include some of the world's most prominent scientists, are elected to positions for life, and they can not currently be asked to leave.
But while the scientific world is working to address gender imbalances, discrimination and sexual harassment against women in historically male dominated areas, the academy has had to face pressures to change its membership rules.
At a preliminary vote Tuesday at the group's annual meeting in Washington, members approved an amendment to the organization's bylaws that would give it power to eliminate any scientist engaging in sexual harassment , to discrimination, intimidation or other activities as defined in a new code. Driving.
A final vote of all members of the academy, composed of about 2,000 scientists is scheduled for mid-June.
"Some members have already been asked to resign, but we have never had the ability to force him to resign," said Marcia McNutt, president of the academy, in an interview on Thursday.
Controversies involving members of the academy and other scientists have engulfed many laboratories, conference rooms and conferences in recent years.
In 2015, Geoffrey W. Marcy, a noted astronomer, resigned from the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley after being convicted of a campus investigation involving student sexual harassment. .
In 2018, Columbia University dismissed one of the best neuroscientists, Thomas Jessell, after an internal investigation revealed violations of "university policies and values."
As reported by the New York Times, studies have found favorable biases for male scientists in recruitment, salaries, start-up funds, creative credits, conference invitations prestigious university seminars and invitations to speak in front of conference panels ("manels"). ).
Some argue that change must take place in the institutions that support scientists in the United States, where women scientists account for about 30% of high-level teaching positions. In October, the National Science Foundation began requiring institutions to warn a scientist working on a project using the foundation's funds to harass a person.
Voting at the National Academy of Sciences was a similar effort, said Dr. McNutt. The umbrella organization of the group, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, had commissioned a study on gender issues just before the charges against Harvey Weinstein were made public in 2017 and propelled the #MeToo movement era to the center of the national conversation, she said. .
"The problem of sexual harassment has spread not only to the entertainment industry and politics, but also to science," said Dr. McNutt. "We have heard the names of a number of prominent scientists who appeared on the news, but the academy decided that it was necessary to wait for this report to be published."
In June 2018, the national academies published the results of this study on gender, the first on this topic. he concluded that years of efforts to prevent sexual harassment in the fields of science, engineering and medicine had failed, and urged universities and legislators to radically change the way in which they respond to allegations of harassment.
The issue was delicate for national academies because some of its members had been victims of sexual harassment in their universities.
"It was basically said that we have to fight sexual harassment as seriously as other forms of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism," she said.
In August 2018, the National Academy of Sciences began drafting its code of conduct, and this week's status vote was a way to enforce it, Dr McNutt said. "The academy felt we needed to put into practice what we were preaching," she said.
About 95 percent of voters were in favor, she said, while others were worried about the process to rule on alleged infractions. Dr. McNutt said the process was still being "tweaked", but that it could include cases in which universities took action, scientists dismissed or public documents about wrongdoing .
"Then we would decide if it is relevant," she said. "We would decide what kind of punishment seems reasonable, given the seriousness of the offense."
Nancy Hopkins, molecular biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, measured in 1994 the laboratory space needed to write a report on gender discrimination: attracted national attention, said the move of the academy was a "great idea".
"Putting the power and prestige of the Academy behind this – and other problems of scientific misconduct – is extremely important," she wrote Thursday in an email. "This will not solve this problem, but it is an essential part of the solution, as we continue to advance solutions to these problems for the sake of science."
On social networks, women in science reacted strongly to the vote, with some saying that such an initiative was long overdue.
(The temperature reported the conviction of Daniel Carleton Gajdusek in 1997 for abusing a boy.)
The academy has taken other steps to try to resolve the recurring problems of its more than 150-year history. This week, he announced that he had elected 100 new members, including 40 women, the most elected of all time.
Dr. McNutt said that about 18% of the members of the academy were women, but that they made up about half of the members of his board of directors.
"It is wrong to say that it is a male-dominated organization," she added, "because women's voices are well respected."
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