Dal’s Toxic Research Environment
When that didn’t work for them, their tactics became horrifying. They demanded that I be sent to an inpatient psychiatric unit in another country. It wasn’t a medical opinion. I wasn’t anybody’s patient. It was their demand.
Dr. Gabrielle Horne on the Toxic Research Environment of Halifax, 11th March 2018
Dr. Gabrielle Horne, a Halifax cardiologist who successfully sued the former Capital District Health Authority after her hospital privileges were reduced, has had her damages reduced to to $800,000 from $1.4 million by a Nova Scotia Court. Dr. Gabrielle Horne had a high-profile research grant in 2002, but her superior(s) tried induct their “researcher(s)” into her project. After being uncooperative, Dr. Horne was subjected to a campaign of character assassination, blackballing, and academic mobbing. Guess who the Capital District Health Authority was affiliated with? Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine. Dalhousie did take some heat from this scandal (which they quickly deflected). To quote,
The Canadian Association of University Teachers also attempted to put pressure on Dalhousie, which it claimed had recently moved from being “an ineffective defender of its faculty member to one of her attackers” by rescinding Horne’s clinical scholar award because of “her failure to report significant research activity.”
[……..]The Canadian Association of University Teachers, stymied by its failure to get cooperation from the health authority or action from the provincial government, which argues it has no authority in the dispute, stepped up pressure on Dalhousie to put pressure on its partners at the Capital District Health Authority.
In November, it wrote to university president Tom Traves, threatening to censure Dalhousie if it didn’t press for what it calls “procedural fairness” and do more to support its beleaguered medical faculty member. Such a censure could have profound consequences for Dalhousie—under censure procedures, CAUT’s 48,000 academics across Canada would be urged not to accept appointments at Dal or participate in university academic conferences, and academics world-wide would be asked to do the same.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Dal did respond—Traves wrote to the authority’s board chair, expressing the university’s “profound and continued concerns” about the treatment of Horne and Goodyear—but it wasn’t quite enough to convince CAUT to rescind its threat. Last weekend, the matter came up at CAUT’s regular executive committee meeting in Ottawa. Although it held off on proceeding with the formal censure process until November, it pointedly warned Dalhousie it expects action—and soon.
