The Academic Bully: Treatment and Side effects

So, you have identified someone with the Academic Bully syndrome and are wondering how to help this unfortunate soul....or at least help yourself by helping them control their symptoms. What do you do?

Honestly, it is easiest is to walk away and never look back, but sometimes this isn't possible. In this case, I have found a treatment that, so far, has been 100% effective.

Before I explain the treatment, let me present my credentials. I have had extensive experience with Academic Bullies on job interviews (lovely interactions that included telling me I was an "idiot" and my science wasn't actually science, for example), on collaborations (where they tried to force me to make them coauthors on projects they had nothing to do with), and in the classroom (students can exhibit this syndrome as well, and it is not pretty). Every interaction is the same. Bully says something rude that I assume is a misunderstanding and I respond diplomatically. After a few assaults I realize I'm being socially hog-tied so this person can psychologically beat me.

The treatment for an academic bully is to let them know that you will will not play by their rules. Every time I stand up to an academic bully, they not only back off, they treat me with respect. Honestly, every time. I won't say any of us are buddies and the respect is often more wary than deeply heart-felt, but I'm a simple person and I'm happy with not being mentally beaten on a regular basis. Now, if you are uncomfortable with threatening to kill someone and put their body in a dumpster, there are other - some may say classier - options to make a bully back off. FSP had a great response to her Academic Bully:

...I said "You must never read any scientific journals. I find that surprising for a senior graduate student. Is that typical of this department?"

This is the "turning the tables" approach where the bully says something that implies something wrong with you, but can also imply something wrong with them. Acmegirl also handled hers with style. She employed the "I'm patiently explaining to you why you are a dumbass" approach. This treatment requires a lot of patience, but often results in such a thorough dosage that the person never displays symptoms around you again.

The trick is developing a way that allows you to get around the social constraint in a way you are comfortable with. Over the years, I have developed what I call the "laughing smackdown". I treat the attack like a joke (afterall, what normal person would seriously say that?) and then, still laughing, I deliver the smackdown. I say something equally outlandish while laughing (like it's a joke). The insertion of humor allows me to give socially acceptable cover to my response and the bully knows that I will not just sit there and take it. The treatment is to let them know you'll stand up for yourself and the trick is to figure out a way to apply your treatment that you are comfortable with.

With any treatment there are potential side effects and dosage issues. How frequently you have to dose your Academic Bully will depend on the individual. Some of mine are good after one dose, others I am still dosing years later. The good news is that it is often painfully obvious when your Academic Bully needs their next dose. An unexpected side effect I have experienced is the academic bully may, in rare cases, fall in love with you. I had this happen once and it took me years to get rid of him.

Obviously, this is not a one-bully fit's all approach. A good example of a different type of bully who will not respond to this treatment is the Princess. For an example of a Princess, read Professor in Training's description of DrMeMeMe. Application of the above treatment to a Princess can cause toxic side effects. Princesses will get haughty and sulky and probably initiate petty thieving, vicious rumors, and other subtle psychological torture. (I found this out the hard way). So you need to diagnose your bully carefully.

So good luck out there, diagnose and treat your bullies carefully and hopefully you may earn yourself a little space.

When brains insist on vacation

So, I promised today part II of academic bullies, but it will have to wait. Normally I come into work, drink a cup of coffee, write a piece for the blog while my brain boots up, and then roll into my day. I wrote the academic bullies pieces this weekend at home and my brain was not capable this morning of doing anything outside the coming to work routine, so academic bullies is at home and I'm here. I'll try to post it this evening when I get home.

However, I feel like my morning isn't complete if I don't write something and what is on my mind right now is that my brain is being seriously rebellious. I have lots of things I need to do, but very little that my brain will agree to focus on. My brain and I have always had a delicate relationship and I have learned over the years that if I treat it like the highly-strung, delicate apparatus it is, I can get great mileage out of it, but if I ignore the weird sounds and sluggish performance, it will come to a grinding, screeching halt just when I need it the most. I've been pushing really hard this summer for a variety of reasons that I may blog about in the future. Suffice it to say, that I've been ignoring my brain's warning lights for a little too long. Yesterday, it pretty much flat-lined on me. After some attempts to jump start my brain with caffeine paddles, I managed to revive it enough to finish my presentation for next week. But the strain was too much and when my brain started to flat-line again, General Disarray insisted that my only hope for finishing out the week with any semblance of productivity was to go home and let it rest.

I know so many people who seem to have brains of steel and I envy them in some ways. I could be so much more productive if my brain didn't need to take down-time, but I have found that my brain needs its quiet time...time when it is apparently...thinking.

I know it is weird to speak of one's brain in the third person, but I do sometimes feel like I have an uneasy truce with something I do not quite control. My responsibilities involve feeding it (it loves science, languages, history, art, and video games), taking it on 'field trips' (it seems to love traveling abroad and art museums), and giving it encouragement and reassuring it that it's a good brain (well, actually, I'm very bad at that, but fortunately General Disarray takes care of that responsibility). In return, it takes problems I can't seem to solve, chews on them, and spits out innovative ways of dealing with the issue. Our strife comes when I want it to solve a problem and it thinks that I have not taken good enough care of it...that's when the battles begin and let me tell you...the brain always wins.

Right now, I'm bribing my brain....just a few more days and we'll go to Milwaukee and you'll hear about all sorts of cool science that will be new. I also tried to bribe it with a tour of the Miller Brewery, but it spit that out pretty fast...however, I hear they have a nice little art museum..."Hmmm," the brain says....Quick, while it's distracted, maybe it'll let me rewrite that paper!

The Academic Bully: Symptoms and Diagnosis

In academia, we have a variety of adept psychological bullies. In this two-part series, I will focus on the "academic bully". The best way to describe this syndrome is through example, so I am using an interaction described by FSP on her blog:

When first introduced to a grad student whose research was in a field closely related to mine, the student said "I've never heard of you." Then, in case this comment was a bit too subtle for me, he added "You must not publish very much".

This is what I would call a text-book example of the "insulting academic bully" syndrome. This is not to be confused with aggressive scientific questioning, though there is a variant of the academic bully syndrome that can masquerade as valid scientific questioning: the "scientific academic bully". For a good example of this you should read acmegirl's description of interacting with a scientific academic bully at her poster presentation. It's classic.

Regardless of the variant, the Academic Bully is someone who says aggressive, bullying things that under normal rules of social engagement would not be acceptable to say and then uses those same rules of conduct to hamstring the other person. It's similar to the boyfriend who breaks up with his girlfriend in a restaurant to avoid a "scene" - they manipulate a social interaction so that they can do something unpleasant AND the other person feels they cannot respond because they might look bad. However, unlike the boyfriend who dumps you and is gone, once an academic bully realizes you will play by social norms, they are a bit like the Energizer Bunny - they just keep going.

How do I know? I had a friend who was an Academic Bully and he told me this was the case. I know, it sounds like "friend" and "Academic Bully", seem like they should not be in the same sentence unless there's a "not" in there, but he was an unusual academic bully (I've met lots of them, so I know of what I speak). I think he was conducting a social experiment - how far can you push someone before they finally abandon the constraint of accepted social conduct? If you stood up to him he was your loyal friend for life...if not, well...He once told me that he continued tormenting a person in our lab because he (the victim) would never just tell him (the Academic Bully) off no matter how out of line he (the Academic Bully) was. He told me all this after I just couldn't take him any more and told him he was being a tool and if he didn't shut up I would kill him, discard his corpse in a dumpster and tell his wife he ran off with an undergrad cheerleader....details of my response have been altered to protect my identity, but it shockingly wasn't that far off. We were great friends after that.

My friend was what I would call a "benign" Academic Bully (the word benign is used here not to denote approval, but in the more medical sense, since you often still have benign growths removed). His bullying had nothing to do with gender or ethnicity, was focused on the "older" members of the lab who he thought should be able to defend themselves (ie. other postdocs and senior grad students), and was confined to scientific issues. "Cancerous" Academic Bullies also exist. They only exhibit symptoms towards women and/or minorities and the intent is to undermine the victim's self-esteem and make them doubt their own worthiness, intelligence, and/or accomplishments. I have run into numerous examples of both during my career. For those of you who follow Adventures in Ethics and Science, these syndromes are analogous to the spherical vs asymmetrical bastards concept.

So, having discussed the definition and symptoms of the academic bully, you think you have diagnosed your bully and wish to apply some remedy to their illness. Perhaps you are hoping for some ointment, pill, or even electric shock therapy that will cure them once and for all. Unfortunately, if you are unlucky enough to know an Academic Bully, I am sad to say there is no cure for their condition. However, I have found that there are some treatment options that can help keep this person's symptoms in check. Hang in there, and tomorrow I will discuss treatment options and warnings about unexpected side effects.