Lest you think Absinthe and I are shrill, hysterical harpies, may I direct you to this Physics Today article from 2004 titled "Ethics and the Welfare of the Physics Profession". An APS task force undertook a survey on ethics. Here's the good stuff:
- The 1987 APS statement on integrity in physics reads, in part, "The physics community has traditionally enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for maintenance of high ethical standards and integrity in its scientific activities. Indeed, the American Physical Society is one of the few professional societies which has not felt the need for a formal code of ethics." Hee!
- The task force reported that "By far the highest response rate and the most extensive and heart-felt answers to the open-ended survey questions came from the junior members of APS-that is, physicists within the first three years after getting the PhD." Nearly half of them responded, a lot of them within hours via the web.
- "In contrast to the high response rate among junior members, only a quarter of physics department chairs responded to the survey they were sent. "
- "Particularly shocking to the task force was how often the words 'abuse' and 'exploitation' were used to describe the treatment of graduate students. A number of junior members suggested that ethics training should first be made mandatory for professors, so that they could 'learn how to treat their students and postdocs in a humane way.' Several wrote of the 'powerlessness' of graduate students and postdocs, who depend on their supervisor for letters of recommendation and therefore cannot afford to blow the whistle on instances of mistreatment."
Dear readers, please note that the vast majority of physicists are white males. Therefore we can assume that the vast majority of the junior members describing abuse and exploitation are white males. And that's what it's like to be one of the privileged ones in physics.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, another article published in 2004 in the Chronicle of Higher Education asked the question "Is Graduate School a Cult?" (no subscription needed). Author Thomas Benton was talking about the humanities, and was half tongue-in-cheek, half serious, but I think his remarks are chillingly relevant for women - hell, for any decent human - in science and engineering.
For all its claims to the contrary, graduate education does not seem to enhance the mental freedom of many students, some of whom are psychologically damaged by the experience...[graduate school seems] to have a lot in common with mind-control cults. It's not difficult for a casual researcher to gain entry into the bizarre world of cults and anti-cult activists. A quick Internet search will inevitably lead one to...Freedom of Mind Center. [Steven Alan] Hassan was a member of the Unification Church...[he is] "America's leading expert on cults." For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar...[and] mildly disturbing. Hassan calls his outline the "BITE Model," which stands for behavior, information, thought, and emotional control. Let's review a few of the traits of each category and see if any of them sound familiar.
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Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."
- Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."
- Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evi;; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."
- Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined. ' "
Are you experiencing some shock of recognition? I was particularly startled when I learned that recent college graduates are one of the groups most frequently targeted by cult recruiters.
Women scientists, say goodbye to your identity guilt. Visualize positive, fulfilling futures for yourselves, devoid of pinhead control freaks who desperately cling to power by sucking the life force of younger, more talented individuals. Do not shun those who have left academia as if they are diseased and proximity might infect you with their plague. Vacation on Planet Zorn as needed. Slap on your anger tiara and read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. Photocopy and blow up good parts and leave them lying around the physics lounge, just for grins. Hey, if they're still putting up the girlie calendars in the labs and pornographic screen savers on their computers and riding lactating mothers out of national labs on a rail, then I think we can offer up some top-notch science-writing about the exquisitely designed clitoris and its 8,000 nerve endings, which need no man to make a woman happy.
12:33:42 PM 
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