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Prevent upwards bullying and abuse of reporting systems

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 466–467 (2023)Cite this article

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To date, critical actions against bullying and harassment in academia include funding agencies withdrawing funding from perpetrators1; science academies ejecting harassers2; institutions and universities improving their reporting systems3; journal editors increasing awareness4; recruiters changing practices to stop rehiring harassers5; and members of the scientific community refusing to remain neutral about bullying and harassment issues6,7.

However, to create confidence in these efforts and accelerate their success, we must also prevent abuse of reporting systems and resources. These systems and resources are aimed at empowering targets and disciplining perpetrators, but some individuals pretend to be targets to unethically benefit from the system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology and Precision Health Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Morteza Mahmoudi

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  1. Morteza Mahmoudi
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Correspondence to Morteza Mahmoudi.

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Competing interests

M.M. discloses that (1) he is a co-founder and director of the Academic Parity Movement (www.paritymovement.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing academic discrimination, violence and incivility; (2) he is an advisor for and shareholder in Partners in Global Wound Care (PGWC), and a co-founder of and shareholder in NanoServ Corp. and Targets’ Tip Corp.; and (3) he receives royalties/honoraria for his published books, plenary lectures and licensed patents.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Sara Branch for her contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Mahmoudi, M. Prevent upwards bullying and abuse of reporting systems. Nat Hum Behav 7, 466–467 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01567-z

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