Hello, A few comments on this. I failed out of a PhD program a few years ago, FWIW. 1) I think that many of the experiences the author had would generalize to

Hello, A few comments on this. I failed out of a PhD program a few years ago, FWIW. 1) I think that many of the experiences the author had would generalize to non-academic fields -- pretty much anywhere in which there are power imbalances and vested interests. I used to be a teacher's aide in a kindergarten classroom in a rough part of a U.S. city. One day, I watched a teacher hit a kindergartner with a closed fist. It was part of a pattern of violence. This upset me, and I asked my supervisor (not a teacher) whether it was worth reporting to Child Protective Services. The supervisor said that it was ultimately up to me, but that when one of their previous charges had reported a similar situation, it had gone nowhere, hadn't protected any kids, and had seriously damaged relationships between the organization I was a part of and the school district. Sometimes you see something wrong and you can't do anything about it because you're too low on the totem pole. I'd love to be a part of the world where that didn't happen, but I think that's equivalent to hoping that I not work on anything important. 2) This whole thing could have been avoided if she or her discipline had a strong norm of posting preprints online (so her committee member couldn't have scooped her so easily). A commitment to such things is one reason why economics is more influential than other fields [1]. 3) Failing out of grad school was the most difficult experience of my life to date. At the time I found it terribly unfair and undeserved. Now I'm glad to be elsewhere. I hope the author feels similarly in time. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-01/economists-profit-by-giving-things-away https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-01/economist...