The author is one of the two women who reported sexual misconduct by Axel Grothey to NIH in 2019. Grothey was, at the time, a member of an NCI steering committee. The Cancer Letter doesn’t identify targets of sexual misconduct.
While I’m glad that in a recent response to questions from a congressional committee NIH recognizes that sexual harassment is a major obstacle in the advancement of science and has put new processes in place to address this issue, the letter does not adequately address the lack of response in the case of Dr. Grothey (The Cancer Letter, Sept. 24, 2021).
The response to Congress states that Dr. Grothey was not key personnel on an NIH award. He was, however, a co-chair of the National Clinical Trials Network GI Steering Committee within the NCI, a division of the NIH. In the clinical research realm, this is a position of power and influence.
The point of my letter to the NIH was to raise the awareness that there was a sexual harasser at the helm of one of their own committees. Clinical research concepts funded through the cooperative group network ultimately require the approval of the steering committee to proceed.
As co-chair of the GI steering committee, Dr. Grothey could make decisions about concepts, which could affect the progress of a clinical researcher’s career. He also attended cooperative group GI oncology meetings where he could assert his influence and power about research concepts. His former victims also had to attend these meetings and face him in order to continue their own clinical research activities.
Dr. Grothey’s leadership position not only had the potential to affect former victims’ careers, this position also kept his pattern of harassment from becoming public.
It prevented other investigators from speaking up about his well-known, egregious behavior because their trials would need to go through that very same approval mechanism within the NCI. Therefore, anyone who spoke up about Dr. Grothey’s behavior could face retaliation in the form of rejection of their clinical research proposals.
My letter was to bring awareness to Dr. Grothey’s pattern of harassment and the potential for future abuse of power. My intention was to protect past and present victims, but also to prevent future victims.
I am surprised that despite knowing a sexual harasser was leading one of their committees, the NIH let him remain in a position of power. He may not have been employed by an NIH-funded institution at the time of the complaint, but he was on an NCI committee.
Why did they let someone they knew was a sexual harasser continue to lead one of their own committees that had influence and control over the outcomes of many investigators’ clinical research?
Instead…there was silence.
I was encouraged to use the NIH’s reporting mechanism by a person in leadership at the NCI. When I submitted the complaint, the automated response stated that I would receive a response to that complaint within 15 days. However, I received no further correspondence.
At the very least, the NIH could have acknowledged that I sent the complaint, and if they truly could not investigate the complaint, they could have let me know and offered guidance for other reporting mechanisms. Instead, there was silence. For nearly two years, there was silence.
Silence perpetuates this behavior throughout the scientific community. Perpetrators rely on this silence to continue their offensive patterns of behavior. Silence stifles the voice of past, present, and future victims.
In this regard, I do agree with the statement in the NIH response that “other organizations, including licensing boards, scientific societies, and research institutions” also need to do their part in “minimizing harassment in science.” In the case of Dr. Grothey, multiple institutions, licensing boards, scientific societies and committees remained silent.
To stop these behaviors from repeatedly occurring, we cannot just rely on the bravery of victims to come forward. Very few victims do report sexual harassment due to lack of anonymity in the investigative process and lack of protections for whistleblowers.
The leaders of the scientific community need to stand up, listen to victims who do come forward, do a fair investigation of allegations, report findings, develop a reporting structure to make others aware and prevent the perpetrators from harassing again. They need to end the silence.
It was not until the investigative reporters from The Cancer Letter brought the behaviors of Dr. Grothey to light that anyone at the NIH or NCI took the necessary actions to remove Dr. Grothey from his leadership position and end his ability to abuse power and influence over other investigators.
On behalf of all past, present, and future harassment victims of Dr. Grothey, I extend my gratitude to The Cancer Letter investigative reporting team. I am also grateful and proud that members of the U.S. House of Representatives have recognized this extremely important issue of sexual harassment in the scientific community and are requesting answers for why the NIH did not take actions sooner in this case.
It is surprising that the majority chairs of the Committee and Subcommittee (both Democrats) did not also sign the letter requesting a response from Dr. Collins on how the NIH handled the complaint against Dr. Grothey.
While there is a lot of movement to develop policy regarding sexual misconduct in government agencies from Democratic leadership in the Senate, bipartisan support from the House of Representatives will be critical to move these policies forward.
The oversight necessary to eliminate sexual harassment from affecting the advancement of science should not be a political issue.
