My diversity supplement journey as a disabled student, a thread: #HigherEd #Research #AcademicTwitter #ScienceTwitter #SciTwitter #Academia #AcademicChatter #DisabledinSTEM #CripTheLab #DisabilityTwitter
#Science #HigherEducation #BiologyEducation #GradSchool #MedTwitter #Lab

Since y'all liked the protocol, I'm gonna take you on a journey through my time on a diversity supplement during 2019. I want people to understand just how colossally diversity efforts fail disable students. This one's an even bumpier ride. Heads up.

This did NOT, I repeat, did NOT take place in my current lab. It was a lab in vascular biology/ pediatrics. Still at Yale.

I was accepted to an MS program in the area, but I couldn't afford it without securing a job first. I looked everywhere I could think of, but no one would hire someone who didn't live in the state. I was getting frantic, and tried reddit, outlining all of the obstacles I'd

overcome, and how I was a hard worker and just really wanted to utilize this opportunity. Someone there directed me to an individual at Harvard who had had a similar path, fraught with adversity. She told me about a diversity supplement she'd gotten as a trainee, and said

disabled students could get them, too. She told me all about NIH Reporter, and how to use it. So I get on and I'm looking for eligible R01s at Yale, and I find this pediatrician with an R01. I send her an email after reading her papers, and she gets back to me maybe a week later

Now, here's the first red flag-I just didn't recognize it at the time. After telling her I was disabled and looking to apply for a supplement, she responded saying she was, "absolutely willing to do this" but would I tell her about myself first. I felt like the order should have

been switched, but whatever. So I outline my disabilities and she's like, ok, let's do this. So we start this application. Mind you, I have to encourage her several times to meet with me (she didn't even bother setting up a meeting, which I now understand was also

a red flag), and we set up a Skype meeting, and she seems totally normal. Really. She asks me if I keep normal hours, because she had a trainee that didn't do that, and it was a challenge, she says. I assure her I do. She mentions that she had to fire someone in 2018, because

he didn't do any work, so as long as I do work, I'll be fine? I thought this was a little inappropriate for an interview but gave her BOD. So we hang up and she sends me this mentoring plan. I'm gonna post it here because she's a pediatrician and she knows all about

non-verbal learning disorders and cerebral palsy. ADD and autism have a lot of overlap with the two (in some ways, almost identical), so there's a short list of two things I need: written, detailed protocols, and (at HER insistence), designated assistance with fine-motor skills

should I need it. She offered this herself. She told the NIH that she was motivated and equipped to mentor me, and that she'd discussed my disabilities with me. I also have an email where she said she'd read about them. And remember, this is a pediatrician, so she's had some

experience with these disabilities. She's seen them. Anyway here's a detailed plan:

like, real detailed. Clearly. So we submit the application, it's approved, and I move to New Haven. Now, I should mention, I'm a first gen and my parents have 0 idea how this works, and they don't have the funds to financially support me. So if something goes wrong,

I just get to be homeless. So what happened next? I think you can guess. Yale drops the ball. SOMEONE receives notice of award, but its not me. I am not kidding. I'm supposed to start in December. Months go by. I started on February 28th. Like 2.5 months after I was supposed to.

In the interim, I was coasting off of ramen and just hoping I'd be able to keep paying my rent. Y'all think quarantine is hard? I did this from November to almost March. I had no one. Like please, I trained for this pandemic. So I pick up my whole life and I move here and I'm

all alone and have no idea what's going on or why I can't start work or how I'm gonna pay my bills. Eventually PI reaches out to admins after months, and they get me onboarded. Mysteriously, it was no ones fault, and no one knows what happened or has heard of me. Whatever. So I

Walk into the lab my first day after discussing the project, and PI shows me where the bathrooms are, runs me through this massive lab in thirty seconds, and leaves me to my own devices. I begin looking for the protocols she's promised and had NINE DAMN MONTHS to prepare.

Before anyone is like, "she's a physician, she's busy" you should know, she's only in the clinic one day a week, and theoretically in the lab the rest of the time. At least-that's what she told me and the NIH. See, before I came, she told me and the NIH (in order to get the

funds) that she was a new PI and at the bench daily. So I don't see the protocols and I'm a little annoyed, but not panicked yet. I begin asking her for them. At first, she drags out some scattered, hot mess protocols that I mostly can't read that have NOTHING to do w any

techniques I'm doing at all. So it's clear she hasn't prepared despite telling me and the NIH she's ready for this, she's gonna do it. But it's fine, right? She's at the bench daily. Wrong. So wrong. Now this would be fine if she had a setup conducive to her being away and

accepting trainees, but as I'm about to outline to you, this also did not exist, despite telling NIH otherwise. I get there and meet her postdoc. Remember that handsy postdoc I reported to her? This is the guy. The touching starts pretty immediately and I begin outlining

The behavior in detail to friends, other PIs. He doesn't listen to "no", and PI laughs it off, even after I mention he's done this to the lab tech and also been inappropriate with an undergrad. Later, she'll deny I ever approached her, despite doing it in front of others on one

occasion. But this is just the personal stuff. In the lab, he's charged with assisting me. So I quickly realize that person she complained about not having regular hours on Skype? Yeah, that's also this postdoc. He's still here, and he works evenings. But I don't know this

So after we agree for him to meet to show me a transfection, he doesn't show up for almost seven hours, or respond to email. This becomes a pattern. I also notice a lot of other troubling behavior.

This becomes a pattern. I try to talk to PI, she just tells us to work it out. I realize he's got her snowed. I also realize that part of the problem, is that he knows how to do almost nothing himself. He gets his friends to do his wet lab work. So if I'd had the

protocols, this wouldn't be an issue, but you see where I'm going with this. She also has a lab tech, and when she comes back, my dumb ass thinks I'm saved. WRONG AGAIN. Lab tech doesn't have a science degree. Covers blower into the hood, doesn't know what dNTPs are, cannot help

The list of red flags is a mile long but I've gotta move this forward. Basically, the next six or so months are just me dealing with lab mates being horrific about my disabilities (Yale blamed this on cultural differences, tf?), and in some cases, just accused me of making it all

up. When I went to report the abusive behavior and (accidentally, because I knew of Yales title ix reputation), the touching, PI insisted she'd provided protocols. So I said, "great, where are they?" lo and behold, she can't produce them. I get them in like October....14 months

after she promised the NIH to get actual funding for this research that she would do it. It is SO bad and she has so completely and totally misrepresented her lab and falsified the application to get these supplement funds, that Yale officials actual admit this, because

there's really no concrete way to deny it. At this point, after the abuse I'd endured and the mocking and the inappropriate touching, I'm so torched that this doesn't comfort me much. I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the building I was in was like a fish bowl

There was no way out. I felt destroyed. If I'm honest, I didn't want to live anymore.

My PI would say things like, "I don't know how your brain works." and other shit.

She'd make horribly abusive comments, and of course, I began to believe them.

There was also a policy in the lab about not showing her our data or logging it all. I don't know this, so when an experiment doesn't work, I say something. Big mistake. She begins to tell me its

Only me. I'm just not good at wet lab work. When I asked for the accommodations, she refuses and tells me "I didn't find you, you found me". Again, I am on a DIVERSITY SUPPLEMENT for students with disabilities. She knew what she was signing up for, and didn't do even the bare

minimum. So thankfully the lab next door was amazing because honestly, I wouldn't be alive without them. They saw what was happening. My reagents were disappearing, lab mates were hiding pipettes. I was abandoned at the bench from the day I got there. So

this lab, who by the way is as fed up with my PIs shit as I am at this point (she wasn't financially independent despite having an R01 and most of her reagents were just stolen from the lab next door even after they asked her not to), takes me under their wing in my final months

And I begin getting confirmation from these individuals that she's never been at the bench. Again, she told the NIH things about her lab that had never been true. She wasn't set up for trainees in literally any capacity.

I also got to get a front row seat to her taking on an undergrad through a summer program. She dropped this poor kid off at the bench too, and stuck him with the same postdoc. I warned her about him, but she didn't care. I literally have texts from the undergrad

thanking me for teaching him because nobody else in the lab would. He witnessed some of the things my lab mates did to me, and reported them to the PI. She did nothing. He was supposed to be on an internship and was alone at a bench all day, doing nothing, so he tried

to leave the lab. Talked to his program director, who has published work w my then-PI and told him he was stuck there. Poor kid. She also has a med student rotating through and I quickly find out, she's sold this girl the same bill of goods. Promised her opportunities

she was never gonna give her. So I snap. I lose my damn mind, y'all, and I go to track down former trainees. Turns out, this is quite the pattern of hers.

I find out she's done this all before. That postdoc she said she fired? He quit. Because he experienced the same bullying and lack of proper training I did. Mind you, a postdoc couldn't navigate her lab. But I wasn't gonna give up so I googled protocols and I wasn't

Gonna let this trick run me out. Hell no. I was gonna do this if I was the last thing I do. So I become a nucleic acid pro. I trouble shoot qPCRs like you've never seen. Remember, she's been gaslighting me all this time. Refusing to believe that my lab mates

have the same PCR or western issues, saying its just me. Turns out, I WAS WORKING WITH JUNK PRIMERS FOR SIX MONTHS. They span like three exons, and in some cases, the sequences like, don't exist. The lab next door is helping me blast them and look everywhere and

We can't find them. So she's verbally abusing me and telling me I'm not good at wet lab work and I'm believing her. I'm believing that the thing I've spent years training to do, I am not good at. But the nasty behavior and gaslighting were a pattern, too. She did it

to others. Now I feel like an idiot because truthfully, I wanted to end my life over this lab. The harassment and the touching and the bullying and the gaslighting just felt like so much, and I believed the horrible things she said behind closed doors.

But obviously seeing her basically reduce former trainees to a pile of ashes shifted my perspective, and I saw her for the bully she truly was.

But not before it did a lot of damage. I spent a lot of time here afraid and traumatized, and Yale admins were largely not helpful.

Remember, they sent me back to the lab without accommodations. EEO had no idea how to provide them in a lab. They didn't know what they were doing.

They tried to hire someone to change my perspective about the touching and the harassment. I am not kidding.

There's so much more here I couldn't detail and words would never do it justice, but my PI knew I was coming. What I asked for was simple. It's not like she tried to get it together and we just didn't agree-she just didn't do it at all.

She said all the right things. But in the end, she saw an opportunity to get some funds that weren't peer-reviewed, and she took it. And what I endured there will honestly never leave me. I just hope that the others can put it behind them. The others she hurt.

She was an educated woman. For gods sake, a pediatrician! She read about my disabilities. The plan, as you can see, was detailed. But she never meant any of it. She was predatory. And my disabilities put me more at risk.

It's very hard to tell I'm being manipulated. If someone tells me something, unfortunately, I'll be unlikely to believe they're lying. And she capitalized on this.

In the end, Yale had to relinquish the supplement, and I found my current lab. And my new PI has been patient.

But that experience will never leave me.

Students with disabilities are in literal physical danger when they step into lab spaces, and people don't even know this is a problem.

So do us a favor, PIs? Learn from stuff like this. Make your spaces accessible.

And please, for the love of all that is holy, don't take us just to get a little extra money.

I also reported a lot of scientific misconduct in this lab. When Yale didn't take it seriously, I took it to the NIH, and to in some cases, journals.

It's super hard to have certain disabilities in labs that make it hard to lie or manipulate. Hear me out.

I'm convinced that research misconduct is wayyyy more common than we realize because of the "publish or perish" culture that academia fosters. I never thought to hide my data from her, but my lab mates did. Even those primer sequences. Those are published but I saw the lab

tech and others run and run the same qPCRs over and over until they got the results they needed, and that's what she got. My name was even put on a journal article that I only edited. I never saw data for that article, ever.

But I didn't understand what was going on

My disabilities make me vulnerable and I really rely on the people around me to tell the truth to survive in the world. My lab mates got by by lying and manipulating, and so did my PI. If you can do those things, you'll be ok. People with NVLDs and autism can't do that.

It's not that we're spectacular people, we just aren't great manipulators. Even when it will help us survive.

There's no way for me to even safely choose a lab because if you lie to me, I'll never know until it's too late. I can't even keep myself safe.