One of the brightest scientists who returns to Italy. Enthusiasm and admiration. Then suddenly doubts, suspicions, rumors. That feed on to trigger a sensational decision: the mass resignation of the scientific committee of the Institute which was to welcome the professor at home. What happened to Pier Paolo Pandolfi, world star of cancer research, for seven years director of the oncology genetics program at «Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center» di Harvard and about to start his new adventure at the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) in Padua? (Read the interview with the Italian scientist)
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Everything starts in February 2019
Il Corriere is able to tell it after an investigation lasting a few weeks, through which testimonies were collected, documents read and scientific institutions were consulted.
Everything starts in February 2019, when a researcher in the laboratory directed by Pandolfi (laboratory where his wife also works) turns to the top of the University to file a complaint. The accusation is heavy: the young woman claims that for almost a year she would have been the center of attention of her boss, such as to have created them not only serious internal disturbances but also professional and career difficulties. The young woman reports that she has received appreciation in public; but not only. She explains that the teacher has been sending her sentimental emails for months and that she is constantly asking to speak. Twice, months later, she reminds Professor chand her attentions put her in serious embarrassment and asks him to keep conversations on business matters. Pandolfi however does not stop. Keep on writing them. He sends her songs. He repeats that he would like to have conversations with her.
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Take the internal procedure
The young woman is so worried that when she has to move in the corridors she is accompanied by some colleagues. Upon receiving the complaint, Harvard immediately triggers an internal procedure. Sources interviewed by the Corriere maintain that between February and April the legal staff interrogates almost all the members of the Pandolfi workshop. No specific question, but requests for clarification on the professor’s attitude in the laboratory and on his conduct. And we come to the turning point. On May 23, 2019 Harvard formally asks the professor to leave the laboratory. It is suspended. However, no criminal reports are reported to be made.
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«We haven’t seen him since that day»
The professor stays away from his laboratory, in theory he could not even use the mailbox. “We haven’t seen him here since that day,” some researchers reported. But the question for many inside the laboratory remains a mystery: Harvard gives no explanation. Until the simple communication, at the end of the year, that Pandolfi would have left his research center.
And we get to today: after the suspension for Covid, on 20 May the Vimm of Padua announces the arrival of the professor. “He was forced to leave because of harassment,” he immediately writes in the his blog For better Science the German biologist Leonid Schneider. And the same raises up Twitter Michael Balter, professor at New York University. A month in which doubts, questions are nourished. Until the resounding mass resignation of the Vimm scientific committee: “We fear a great scandal.”
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June 27, 2020 (change June 27, 2020 | 11:01 am)
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