Part 1：https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/spotlight/2023/01/fallen-star/fall-of-david-sabatini/ Fate and the fallen star photo illustration of David Sabatini. photo by Jonathan Wiggs /Globe Staff David Sabatini, a biologist who once generated Nobel Prize buzz, is hoping for a comeback after he was abruptly ousted amid allegations of sexual harassment. The case remains one of the most polarizing of its kind in science, and raises hard questions: Is there room for lesser penalties in such complex cases? Did Sabatini deserve a second chance? This series was reported by Mark Arsenault, Meghan E. Irons, and Spotlight editor Patricia Wen. This story was written by Arsenault. Published Jan. 28, 2023 The 7 a.m. Acela out of South Station trembled along the rails toward Manhattan. David Sabatini sat alone on the left side of the train. He had brought along a science paper to work on, but had a lot on his mind. He kept his Wordle streak alive on his phone, and stared out at the picturesque Connecticut coastline. His clothing hung loose from recent weight loss, presumably from stress. It was Jan. 4, 2022, a brisk sunny day. The tall, gangling scientist with a long mess of black hair had once generated Nobel Prize buzz for his discoveries in biology. But at that moment, he was unemployed in his 50s, his reputation ruined, spending many nights in his brother’s guest room or on his ex-wife’s sofa, so emotionally distraught that his family was afraid to leave him alone.
Biologist David Sabatini worked on a word puzzle at his home in Cambridge, in September. Biologist David Sabatini worked on a word puzzle at his home in Cambridge, in September. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) Sabatini was journeying to New York in search of a new beginning, an against-all-odds comeback. For the previous six months, he had been staggering through the wreckage of his career. Seemingly overnight, in August 2021, the MIT biologist and renowned scientist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge’s Kendall Square had been forced from his research post. MIT soon after suspended him and would move to revoke his tenure. Next Read part two A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science His ouster came within 24 hours of his receiving a copy of a Whitehead investigative report accusing him of violating sexual harassment policies and of enabling a toxic and bullying atmosphere in his 40-person lab. Deeply damaging to Sabatini was the revelation he had had a past sexual relationship with a brilliant young Whitehead scientist with a similar title but much less research experience and stature, Kristin Knouse, in her early 30s. Sabatini and Knouse had met in 2012, when she was a star student in a graduate course Sabatini co-taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They later got to know each other better through a shared love of science and fine whiskey. Their sexual encounters — which violated Whitehead’s strict relationship policy — ended with him courting another woman who used to work in his lab, and Knouse for complicated reasons turning slowly, but powerfully, against him. The speed and totality of his downfall were stunning. In a matter of months, an illustrious lengthy career had been shattered, maybe for good. Until the controversy erupted, Sabatini had spent 24 years at Whitehead without a misconduct allegation in his personnel file, according to a Globe review of human resource files shared by him. In fact, Sabatini had been a bright light during Boston’s emergence as the Silicon Valley for biotech. The best young scientists from across the world yearned to work in his lab, an electric place that untangled cellular mysteries critical in the study of neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging.
David Sabatini, standing to the left of the poster, and his lab members often paused to mark the personal and professional milestones of its members. In this case, the lab joins a colleague in celebrating a scientific paper appearing in a prestigious journal. David Sabatini, standing to the left of the poster, and his lab members often paused to mark the personal and professional milestones of its members. In this case, the lab joins a colleague in celebrating a scientific paper appearing in a prestigious journal. (Provided by David Sabatini) Few cases in the scientific community have been as polarizing as this one. The fiery trail of his fall raced through research centers across the country, and lit up certain corners of social media. The heat of the moment is such that many people interviewed for this story on all sides of the controversy insisted on anonymity, citing fears of social media mob attacks on their names. Some celebrated Sabatini’s ouster as an overdue blow against the enduring boys’ club era in science, an epoch that has run roughly from Aristotle to now. Some of his scientific colleagues and many former trainees, though, contend that a great mentor was dealt a professional death sentence by institutions more interested in their public image than due process. A Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation finds the truth about Sabatini’s fall is far more complicated than the public reports so far. There is no doubt that Sabatini showed poor judgment, sometimes profoundly poor. He knowingly violated important personnel rules, and he lost the trust of Whitehead’s chief executive. And yet there are other ways to read what had happened and why. Investigators placed on Sabatini’s trail may have drawn overly severe conclusions in some areas, and Whitehead and Sabatini may have missed a chance for a less destructive resolution, one that didn’t cause the professional immolation of a top cell biologist and the dismantling of a world-class lab. Sabatini’s case provides a window into the particular nature of top science labs, where leaders can have outsized and almost unquestioned power. It also raises important questions common in many workplaces today where people of diverse backgrounds increasingly work closely together and boundaries governing acceptable behavior — which inevitably shift with the times — need to be as clear as possible.
The prestigious Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square hums day and night with the biomedical research work of top scientists and their up-and-coming trainees.
The prestigious Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square hums day and night with the biomedical research work of top scientists and their up-and-coming trainees. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The Globe’s extensive interviews and review of hundreds of documents — including a copy of Whitehead’s 248-page confidential investigative report into Sabatini’s lab, legal documents, personnel records, and private communications — also find this case may stand out less for its tabloid aspects than for the way the situation escalated. And with all the recent hard-won progress toward equity in the workplace, this case raises questions about whether there is room for gradations in judging workplace misconduct allegations. Someplace in between the old ways, where too often the powerful faced no consequence, and our modern hair-trigger inclination toward career annihilation. The Spotlight Team launched this investigation because the stakes in this case were so enormous for one of the nation’s leading scientists, for a young woman striving to be one, and for the Whitehead, one of Greater Boston’s and the nation’s top research citadels. It is a controversy that has received little notice outside of the academic world but within those circles has relentlessly churned and refuses to rest, opening virulent divisions in the scientific community, the bedrock of the region’s knowledge economy. Was the outcome fair? Unfair? The dispute rages on — on social media, in discussions at scientific conferences, and in court, where Sabatini is pursuing a defamation claim against Knouse and Whitehead’s leaders, and Knouse has countersued. Everyone touched by this episode has been damaged. Advertisement Top young scientists recruited from around the world to the Sabatini lab were scattered and sent scrabbling to pick up their careers. Much of their unfinished work was lost. At Whitehead, discontent simmers among some faculty over the way the investigation was handled. And Knouse, who wants to someday be considered a world-renowned scientist, faces the prospect of being forever publicly associated with a scandal that has nothing to do with her intellectual gifts. Sabatini’s appointment in Manhattan that bright winter day last year was at New York University, where his father once chaired the cell biology department. For months, several top executives at NYU had been quietly vetting the fallen scientist for a research post. They had spoken to some of his former lab members, reviewed Whitehead’s confidential investigative report on Sabatini, and come to believe the report was an unfair depiction of his lab and Sabatini may have been over-punished. They were contemplating something rarely seen in this kind of scandal: a second chance. It was a closely held secret that the prestigious school was mulling an offer to Sabatini. Both sides knew that if word were to leak before the vetting was done, the controversy would almost certainly erupt anew.
A productive and provocative lab under “King David” Sabatini’s 3,000-square foot lab was lit day and night, its soundtrack the hum of cooling fans, whirling servo motors, and centrifuges. The space often smelled yeasty from cultures or acidic from chemical reactions. Postdoctoral researchers and graduate students hired by Sabatini, generally in their 20s and 30s, sat at high benches, often mixing small amounts of clear liquids teeming with the ingredients of life. The people Sabatini brought in hired master’s students and undergrads to assist them, bringing the total lab population to 39. Sabatini’s lab was among the largest at Whitehead, one of the nation’s leading research institutes, and routinely published work in prestigious journals, such as Nature, Science, and Cell. The lab’s budget was about $5 million, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In its early days, the lab had fewer women, but by 2021, women made up about one-third of the postdocs and graduate students. Also, roughly one out of three was an international scientist on a visa.
Scientist David Sabatini and his researchers in his lab gathered to celebrate a lab member’s thesis defense in October 2018. Scientist David Sabatini and his researchers in his lab gathered to celebrate a lab member’s thesis defense in October 2018. (Provided by David Sabatini) Women underrepresented in the top research positions at Whitehead Whitehead Institute’s gender breakdown is generally even when all staff is counted, but skews more male at the higher-level research positions, including in David Sabatini’s lab. Whitehead Institute’s 2021 gender breakdown Employees (573) Male 50% Female 50% Post-doc and graduate students (186) Male 54% Female 46% Principal investigators and fellows who were heads of independent labs (22) Male 73% Female 27% David Sabatini lab’s 2021 gender breakdown Employees (39) Male 59% Female 41% Post-doc and graduate students (21) Male 67% Female 33% Source: Whitehead Institute. Data from 2021 was used to reflect the last year Sabatini’s lab was open. JOHN HANCOCK/GLOBE STAFF Sabatini juggled many roles and three appointments with elite organizations: Aside from being a principal investigator housed at Whitehead, he was a tenured MIT professor and an investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md., and whose funding for the lab covered most of Sabatini’s roughly $380,000 salary. As his lab’s principal investigator, Sabatini was everyone’s alpha boss and mentor; his counsel was prized and his approval meant everything. A glowing recommendation from the P.I. is key for researchers who want to ultimately open their own labs.
David Sabatini ran a lab at Whitehead Institute for 24 years. David Sabatini ran a lab at Whitehead Institute for 24 years. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff) “At any lab social gathering, whether it is happy hour, whiskey tasting, whatever, if David was there, he would just have like a little cocoon of people around him — grad students, postdocs,’’ said a former lab member who has been critical of his tenure. “That was their time to schmooze with King David.” The lab members often worked relentlessly long hours, seven days a week, even sleeping in the lab if running overnight experiments. “The thing is, it’s not because they were forced to do that; that was something they decided to do,” said Kera Xibinaku, an Austrian biologist who in 2021 worked in the lab as a master’s student. “They loved their science, they loved being in the lab.” Many were inspired by Sabatini’s example. He, too, obsessed over work. For someone so high up in his field, he was unusually available to his lab members, accessible at all hours to help with science or career questions. “I credit him for the career that I have right now,” said Kate Koch, 31, a medical and doctoral degree candidate at Harvard Medical School, who worked four years in Sabatini’s lab as an undergrad. “Yes, there is sexism in science. So to have someone like David tell me: ‘You’re good, you’re smart ... I support you’ — I can’t tell you how much that meant.” The Globe interviewed nearly 50 former Sabatini lab members, representing the full arc of the lab’s history. The overwhelming majority generously praised Sabatini’s ability and devotion to his role as a scientific adviser and career coach, and described his lab not as toxic, but as a rigorous, thriving, thrilling place to do elite science. I credit him for the career that I have right now. Yes, there is sexism in science. So to have someone like David tell me: ‘You’re good, you’re smart ... I support you’ — I can’t tell you how much that meant.” Kate Koch, former member of David Sabatini’s lab “Sabatini trainees believe we were part of something very unique, very special,” said Naama Kanarek, assistant professor in the pathology department at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who trained with Sabatini and now directs a cancer research lab. “There was always more. That was his mentorship. ‘Aim higher. Do better.’ This was how he operated. I became a better scientist because of his expectations.” A human constellation forms around someone of Sabatini’s scientific distinction and uncommon ability. By any measure, his lab produced exceptional scientists and high-impact discoveries, largely related to the way cells grow and age, insights into the workings of human genes, and techniques for studying the genes responsible, when they mutate, for some of the worst diseases. A company that grew out of the lab’s work currently has an ovarian cancer drug in clinical trials. Another lab-related company is in trials for a drug to combat depression. Sabatini helped found the companies but is no longer associated with them. “The projects in the lab were super competitive, high risk, and David recruited super competitive, ambitious people,” said Nada Kalaany, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, who trained with Sabatini and now oversees her own lab working on cancer metabolism. “He is like a magnet to intelligent people. He pushes people to their intellectual limit and wants people to succeed.”
In 2003, early in his career at Whitehead, Sabatini (middle row, second from right) joined members of his then modest-sized lab at a scientific retreat. In 2003, early in his career at Whitehead, Sabatini (middle row, second from right) joined members of his then modest-sized lab at a scientific retreat. Roughly 35 scientists trained by Sabatini have opened their own labs at academic institutions around the United States, such as Harvard, Duke, University of California Berkeley, NYU, Rockefeller, and Stanford, as well as universities in Europe, Israel, and Canada. Another 10 or so former Sabatini mentees are directing top-end medical research in the biotech industry. Yet the Sabatini way was not for everybody. The lab was a pressure-cooker, its scientific standards sky-high. And Sabatini could exhibit a swaggering egotism, like the caricature of a top heart surgeon who knows he’s the best. “David was on the short-list for the Nobel Prize, not a Nobel Peace Prize,” said one former lab member. Another, though grateful for Sabatini’s mentorship, nevertheless summed up: “David was smart, he knew his lab was good, and he could be a dick sometimes.” His feedback on science was often painfully direct. If he thought a mentee’s project was a waste of time, he’d say it was a waste of time. Some appreciated his bluntness; some found it hurtful. His language could be crude and foolish; he sometimes used the word “retard” when dismissive of an idea or a person. He flippantly referred to some Whitehead administrators as “potatoes” and allegedly needled a religiously devout male postdoc as the “Catholic virgin.” Many members didn’t care if Sabatini or someone else dropped an F-bomb in the lab, but some did. Kathleen Ottina, Sabatini’s research lab manager from about 2005-2017, said she complained repeatedly to Sabatini about hearing profanities in the lab. Other lab members say Sabatini told people not to swear around Ottina. But she said her complaints were never resolved. “All the young males wanted to be David Sabatini, so they reflected his behavior,” she said. “It’s a shame that a very, very talented scientist was fascinated with the words middle school boys discover.” All the young males wanted to be David Sabatini, so they reflected his behavior. It’s a shame that a very, very talented scientist was fascinated with the words middle school boys discover.” Kathleen Ottina, former research lab manager for David Sabatini Anne Carpenter, a computational biologist who runs a lab at the Broad Institute, was one of the few women in the early days of the lab, where she worked from 2003 to 2006. Carpenter had praised Sabatini on Twitter before his fall, but has since revealed other feelings, posting sharp critiques complaining of “profanity, teasing and mocking of both women and men” by lab members. “I was the only female postdoc and I quickly learned to navigate the lab’s bro culture,” she posted on Twitter. “I avoided being the target of mean comments, but I regret not standing up for those who were targeted.” Many former trainees agreed that lab banter could be edgy and freewheeling and that personalities grated sometimes, but most described the atmosphere as supportive. “Were people in the lab shitheads every now and then? Yes,” said one recent alum. “It was like fighting with brother and sister — you still love each other.”
Anne Carpenter, who worked in Sabatini''s lab in the early 2000s, has openly criticized his leadership style on Twitter and said she had to navigate a "bro culture" while working there. She is shown here in 2006 in New York City after being awarded a science fellowship. Anne Carpenter, who worked in Sabatini''s lab in the early 2000s, has openly criticized his leadership style on Twitter and said she had to navigate a "bro culture" while working there. She is shown here in 2006 in New York City after being awarded a science fellowship. Science was Sabatini’s life. Most of his friends worked in labs, and, in his own, he tried to act as both a boss and a peer, some members observed, diving into lab banter like a grad student. As later recounted in the investigative report commissioned by Whitehead, two women complained to Whitehead’s HR department in 2021 that Sabatini had made comments that made them uncomfortable. One of them said that, in 2016, he had asked her which of two postdocs she would prefer to date. In March 2020, that same report said, Sabatini allegedly told a female lab member that he preferred European women to American women because European women talked openly about sex. “Maybe he wants to be more European haha,’’ the lab member texted a friend. Sabatini could be snarky. He could argue positions he didn’t necessarily hold just to get a rise out of somebody. “He can push into the boundaries of what makes you comfortable,” said one former colleague, a woman, who acknowledged that despite their warm friendship, Sabatini could sometimes be infuriating. “He just enjoys having difficult conversations.” In response to the criticism, Sabatini acknowledged that he may have unintentionally upset people with jokes or comments. “Of course, I’m sure I have offended people,” he told the Globe, his eyes shining with tears. “I’m a hundred percent sure I’ve offended people and they have not told me. But I’ve never done anything out of malice. I’ve never not bent over backwards for everyone in my lab.”
Kristin Knouse (far left) and David Sabatini, (far right) at a whiskey tasting in May 2018. Kristin Knouse (far left) and David Sabatini, (far right) at a whiskey tasting in May 2018. (Provided by David Sabatini) Drawn together by whiskey The creative intensity of the Sabatini lab was a draw. Its weekly lab meeting, where mentees presented their science to the group, drew so many visitors from other labs that Sabatini had to make a rule that his lab members had first dibs on the supply of chairs. Another popular Sabatini lab event was its occasional whiskey tastings. Lots of labs have beer nights. Sabatini hosted his upscale version every few months or so in his office. He would splurge from his own pocket on pricey bottles from Balvenie, The Macallan, and WhistlePig. Lab members who might find it hard to afford a 25-year-old single malt drank samples in plastic cups and ranked them on the whiteboard on the wall.
After graduating from the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Kristin Knouse aspired to have a research lab of her own. After graduating from the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Kristin Knouse aspired to have a research lab of her own. (Gretchen Ertl/Whitehead Institute) The tastings were open to guests, and by 2016 another whiskey aficionado began making appearances. She was Kristin Knouse, already making a mark with her penetrating intelligence and research gifts. Her work focused on unpacking the mysteries of liver regeneration, with an aim to discovering treatments to repair other ailing organs. Then a 28-year-old graduate of Duke University in the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program, Knouse projected a deep interest in science, and possessed a salty vocabulary. Sabatini had served on her thesis committee. One of Sabatini’s close friends, Angelika Amon, a charismatic scientist from MIT, had taken Knouse under her wing. Amon had encouraged Knouse to learn from Sabatini. Sabatini later said that Amon told him that Knouse, while possessing a keen intellect, had a tendency to become over-stressed. Sabatini welcomed Knouse to the whiskey tastings as a friend of the lab, and soon discovered that she knew more about whiskey than he did. Before long Knouse was lending her expertise in picking bottles for Sabatini’s lab tastings and including Sabatini on group invitations for whiskey sampling events around Boston.
A family of scientists Science is in Sabatini’s genes. His father, David Domingo Sabatini, now in his early 90s, is a renowned biologist who for some four decades chaired the cell biology department at what is now the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. The elder Sabatini came from Argentina with his wife, Zulema, a physician, around 1960, to study in the US. They had two sons, both scientists. Bernardo Sabatini, the younger of the two, is a Harvard neuroscientist. David Sabatini graduated from Brown University, then went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to work on his medical and doctoral degrees. He joined a research lab run by neuroscientist Solomon Snyder, where Sabatini, at age 26, published the discovery that would help make his career. He was working with rapamycin, a drug produced by bacteria first discovered in soil samples taken from a volcano on Easter Island. Rapamycin was known to affect the immune system, but no one knew how.
David Sabatini, with his father, David, a scientist and former chair of the department of cell biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and his mother, Zulema, a retired physician. David Sabatini, with his father, David, a scientist and former chair of the department of cell biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and his mother, Zulema, a retired physician. (Provided by David Sabatini) Very roughly speaking, Sabatini dangled rapamycin like a hook into brain tissue from rats, to snare the protein to which the drug binds. Hundreds of rats died in Sabatini’s long quest to gather enough of the protein to identify its building blocks. That protein is now called mTOR, for mechanistic target of rapamycin. The protein is critical to explaining how cells, including human cells, detect nutrients and grow. Disruptions to such essential biological functions contribute to some of the worst diseases, such as cancer. His role in the mTOR discovery made Sabatini’s name, and in 1997, he earned a fellowship to open his own lab at the Whitehead. He soon also moved ahead on the personal side. Sabatini began dating Valentina Nardi, a native of Italy who worked in another lab at Whitehead. They married in 2004. She is now a molecular genetic pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. They have a son, born in 2010. Fast forward to 2018, Sabatini’s professional life was hitting new peaks. His personal life, though, was in flux. His marriage fell apart; he and Nardi separated. They divorced in 2019. Both say the parting was amicable. “I think it happens sometimes; couples fall apart after they have kids,” Nardi told the Globe. “We grew apart over time. We’re very different. I think he’s great. We remain very friendly.” Advertisement
A complex relationship evolves It was not unusual for Sabatini, frequently on the road for scientific conferences, to spend time with his fellow scientists when their paths crossed. In March 2018, Sabatini and Knouse realized they were going to be in Washington, D.C., at the same time. She was just graduating from her MD/PhD program and was about to begin as a Whitehead Fellow, part of a program in which young scientists are given seed money to start their own labs. Sabatini and Knouse met for drinks at D.C.’s Jack Rose Dining Saloon, a renowned whiskey bar. They had a lot to talk about: Knouse’s lab at Whitehead was opening in June, a big step for an up-and-coming scientist. The institute had offered her the position in 2017; Sabatini had supported her candidacy with a letter of recommendation.
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini at the Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington D.C., on April 18, 2018, a fateful night in their complex relationship. Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini at the Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington D.C., on April 18, 2018, a fateful night in their complex relationship. (Provided by David Sabatini) They sampled whiskeys and chatted about scotch and biology. After about two hours, Sabatini paid the check. He and Knouse would go their separate ways. The next month, as it would happen, Sabatini was in Washington again, on April 18, for a conference the next day. Sabatini said Knouse told him she was planning to be in D.C. at that time to see a friend. Sabatini and Knouse made plans to meet again at the Jack Rose. Sabatini e-mailed a Berkeley biologist at his conference to come along. When the biologist backed out, Sabatini and Knouse went alone. Each posted photos on Twitter of the bottles they tasted. By fateful coincidence, both had rooms at the same hotel. Late that night, they shared an Uber back to the hotel in Rockville, Md., about 15 miles away. They had been sipping whiskey together for hours. He was 50 and separated; she was 30 and single. This much is undisputed: They ended up in Sabatini’s hotel room that night and had sex. In the morning, Knouse left for her own room, and then texted while on her way to the airport. They had this exchange, documented in the Whitehead investigative report, referring to their Twitter posts from the night before: KRISTIN KNOUSE I got more Twitter followers than I had scotches last night. Thanks. DAVID SABATINI I aim to please. Soon you will be ahead of me. Safe travels. KRISTIN KNOUSE Same to you. Decided to treat myself to an Uber. [Name of her driver] is driving me to DCA in a Prius. DAVID SABATINI I am so [expletive] tired. Now please make old man joke. KRISTIN KNOUSE Won’t kick you while you’re down. I revived myself with a run through the burbs. DAVID SABATINI Only a young chick could do that. Note: Text exchanges between individuals in this story are animated. Disable animation. In the aftermath of that first sexual liaison, the e-mails exchanged between them seemed to continue as they had before. Four days later, on April 22, they began a long e-mail exchange about snagging assorted whiskeys, discussing the merits of various bottles. “If I am ever sufficiently established and rich we can hire a shared admin to manage and book all domestic and international whiskey endeavors,” Knouse wrote to Sabatini on April 25. “Broadly classified as scientific inquiry.” Within this long exchange, Sabatini offered encouragement when Knouse admitted pre-lab jitters. Knouse: “The whole ‘holy [expletive] I’m starting my own lab in six weeks and have no idea what I’m doing or if anything is going to work’ is starting to hit me.” Sabatini: “Everyone goes through what you’re feeling now. There is a bit of an imposter syndrome that lasts until the lab feels messy and used and you have the first success, even if a small one.” They continued to see each other for occasional sex and kept their meetings secret. They agreed that they were not an exclusive couple, as they later told investigators, and projected to others around them an upbeat supportive friendship. Their texts to one another were sometimes full of urgent sexual energy, about where they might find the privacy and time, however short, to meet. Sabatini: In my office for a bit Knouse: In tissue culture will update in a bit. Knouse: On site clinic too precarious right now. Busier afternoon than expected but could probably duck out downtown at some point. Sabatini: Hmm. Not sure my hours would permit that. Is third floor busy. Knouse: Returning from mouse room will investigate. Their exchanges often, too, featured an archly nerdy scientific patois. “Someone is rocking morning dihydro-T spike,” Knouse wrote to Sabatini after he suggested they meet, referring to testosterone. In pursuing their sexual relationship, they knowingly crossed a line that could pose complications, including the risk of workplace policy violations. They kept their liaison secret. Over roughly the next year and a half, they slept together about 10 to 15 times, according to accounts each later gave to investigators. Sabatini says he came to think of Knouse as one of his best friends.
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini (right) hanging out with a friend in 2019. Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini (right) hanging out with a friend in 2019. (Provided by David Sabatini) They met for dinners and drinks with Sabatini’s professional colleagues. Knouse joined video game sessions, ice cream excursions, and swims at the MIT pool with Sabatini and his son, and went to the movies with Sabatini, his son, and Sabatini’s ex-wife. Knouse joined family movie day with Sabatini and his brother, Bernardo, and Bernardo’s kids. “David had a sardonic sense of humor and Kristin definitely did too,” said one of Sabatini’s friends, who joined an ice cream tour of Cambridge with Sabatini, Knouse, and Sabatini’s son. “It was just fun and very casual and friendly banter about this or that. If you had asked me about the nature of their relationship, I’d have said they were very close friends.”
Lena Pernas, who currently runs her own lab in Germany, had a three-month position as a visiting scientist in the Whitehead lab of David Sabatini at the end of 2018. Lena Pernas, who currently runs her own lab in Germany, had a three-month position as a visiting scientist in the Whitehead lab of David Sabatini at the end of 2018. (Pernas Lab) Those in and around the lab knew Sabatini and Nardi had separated, and in the gossipy world of Whitehead, there was much speculation about his romantic life. In late 2018, a newcomer to the lab drew attention. She was Lena Pernas, then a 31-year-old American scientist working at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany. She came to Whitehead for a three-month position. Pernas had known Sabatini for years through scientific conferences. Some around Whitehead couldn’t help but wonder if Sabatini was romantically involved with this new arrival, but Whitehead investigators later found no evidence their relationship became romantic at that time. Knouse also took note of the arrival of Pernas — a woman roughly her age, with similar high educational achievement and scientific ambition. As 2018 came to a close, Knouse focused on establishing her lab. She and Sabatini kept up their professional, friendly, complex, and occasionally sexual relationship. Knouse was a source of strength and support when Sabatini had a health scare. He said he tried to be supportive when she had some health issues.
A time of new rules Both of them entered this secret relationship at a time when the #MeToo movement had focused greater attention on the hazards of professional relationships that veer into sex. HR departments strained to come up with rules to accommodate the inevitable attraction between co-workers, while at the same time protecting employees from exploitation. Sabatini and Knouse also continued their liaisons even though both were aware through Whitehead’s grapevine that the institute had had at least one recent controversial workplace relationship that required HR intervention. Sabatini had also, a month before his first sexual encounter with Knouse, completed MIT’s online anti-sexual harassment training required of all faculty, records show. Science, like many other professions, abounds with couples who met at work. In fact, leaders of two institutions that would later rule on Sabatini’s fate have been in long-term relationships with people they worked with, though in each case they said they notified higher-ups about it and hewed to applicable personnel guidelines.
The #Metoo movement is credited with bringing accountability on sexual harassment in the workplace, elevating once marginal voices, and inspiring millions of people, including these demonstrators in Los Angeles on Jan. 20, 2018. The #Metoo movement is credited with bringing accountability on sexual harassment in the workplace, elevating once marginal voices, and inspiring millions of people, including these demonstrators in Los Angeles on Jan. 20, 2018. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) In the 1990s, Erin O’Shea, president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, became romantically involved with a graduate student who worked in her lab in California; the couple have now been married 21 years. And Whitehead director Ruth Lehmann has been in a relationship for many years with a former colleague, a NYU neurobiologist who also worked at the Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine at NYU while Lehmann was Skirball’s director from 2006 to 2020. In August 2018, Whitehead amended its rules to take an unusually hard stand against consensual relationships. It banned faculty members, senior managers, and principal investigators from having a sexual relationship with anyone employed at Whitehead, even professional peers of the same high rank. It was a policy considered strict in HR circles, and remarkably scant on details. The policy outlined no procedures for disclosure and mitigation if two employees fall in love, or just get carried away and end up in bed. It said simply that, under the threat of possible termination, it is the responsibility of the people covered by the ban to “control their own actions.” The policy change came five months after Sabatini’s and Knouse’s liaisons began. They continued the secret relationship, now unambiguously forbidden. They both held similar titles as principal investigators, so they both violated the policy. But Sabatini, who had far more stature, would have had more reason to worry about consequences. Whitehead also barred managers from having a relationship with a “close personal relation” over whom they have power. Knouse did not work for Sabatini. But he could potentially have had a career-influencing role, as the far-more established scientist. He was one of her two mentors in her fellowship program, records show, and he had written her letters of recommendation. He later headed the fellows program she was a part of, though that post was focused on attracting new talent not managing fellows.
Kristin Knouse spoke at an event at Whitehead honoring the "new generation" of scientists working there in 2019. Kristin Knouse spoke at an event at Whitehead honoring the "new generation" of scientists working there in 2019. (Whitehead Institute video still) His seasoned guidance meant even more to her in the months to come. In 2019, Knouse was coping with the crushing fact that Amon, her beloved mentor, was battling an advanced case of ovarian cancer. Knouse at the time suffered through dark moods and confided in Sabatini occasionally. “The existential crisis continues,” she wrote to him in January 2019. “What is the point if I’m never satisfied and everything is meaningless and all of my female scientist role models are either dead/dying/falling off the wagon so clearly I’m next.” He responded, “I’m sorry Kk. Text me when up. There is no point. Just to enjoy our time here. And indeed I think we do enjoy it.” Sabatini checked on her one night the next month: DAVID SABATINI Are you ok KK? Just like you have been here for me i will be for you. I’m off to bed as rough day tomorrow. A kiss KRISTIN KNOUSE Cried in mouse room for an hour. KRISTIN KNOUSE Entertained idea of taking trip somewhere but all I picture is me in a cool new location in same terrible mood. DAVID SABATINI When I am back we will plan a cool place for you. KRISTIN KNOUSE I have no interest. KRISTIN KNOUSE Thanks for talking though. Hopefully tomorrow will be better as I cannot focus on anything right now. I feel so [expletive] up. Sabatini says that he noticed something about Knouse that summer of 2019: She began to imply that she could be interested in something more with him than friendship with occasional casual sex, he told the Globe. On July 9, 2019, Knouse wrote to him: “I really value and enjoy our friendship and the personal/physical connection we’ve had and at times find myself wanting to see where it goes while also fully understanding you are not in a place for that now, there are complicating circumstances of age and workplace, and having no idea how you feel.” It was a mistake on his part, Sabatini told the Globe, that he did not fully acknowledge and respond then to what he perceived as her shifting feelings for him. But Knouse would later tell investigators that, from the start of her secret sexual liaisons with Sabatini, she was entwined in a swirl of anxiety about the relationship and the imbalance of power, as well as confusion about what she most wanted from Sabatini — mentoring and networking, friendship, or maybe something more. She would later say that their first sexual encounter felt coercive, and others did too, but he dismissed her misgivings when she voiced them. She privately complained to close colleagues and friends about a sense of unfairness in her dealings with Sabatini. “After crying in my office for an hour, I decided i’m not taking this shit anymore. He can’t have me as a friend when he wants a friend but then when i voice my upset call in the hierarchy and treat me like shit,” she wrote a friend in July 2019. Newsletter: The Globe Investigates Sign up to receive Spotlight reports and special projects in your inbox. Email [email protected] SUBMIT She also complained that he did not realize his demeanor could come off as angry even when he said he wasn’t and that he excessively unloaded personal issues onto her. “He’s also seriously considering a therapist,” Knouse wrote. “Wow you made some progress,” the friend responded. “You keep chipping away at him, he’ll accept your referral.” “I think he will,” Knouse replied.” He always comes around to rationality.” Knouse’s sense of their complex relationship was also evolving — and turning more negative — at a time when a scandalous rumor about Sabatini was also in the air. Sabatini had been seen by some researchers talking on a bench by the Charles River with a female undergraduate who had asked for his advice on grad schools. Speculation soon percolated within the gossipy hubs of Whitehead about the nature of their relationship. The rumors were unfounded, as investigators later concluded. But the gossip fed into Knouse’s doubts about Sabatini, which were reflected in communications she shared with a friend at the time. By late 2019, Knouse was distressed about her relationship with Sabatini, text messages from the time suggest. She respected him professionally, but was becoming disillusioned with him personally, and harbored growing feelings of being treated like a mistress, sexually exploited and called upon only when he needed emotional support about something, Knouse later told investigators.
Kristin Knouse (right) and the late Angelika Amon, who was an MIT professor and her mentor, at a celebration in the Amon lab after Knouse defended her PhD thesis on Sept. 9, 2016. Kristin Knouse (right) and the late Angelika Amon, who was an MIT professor and her mentor, at a celebration in the Amon lab after Knouse defended her PhD thesis on Sept. 9, 2016. In November 2019, she sent texts to Amon sharing some of her distress. KRISTIN KNOUSE I’m getting to the point where I’d be almost willing to go public with my story. It’s done so much damage to me and we''re it not for an amazing support system of friends, you, therapists, etc I’m not sure I’d still be here. Would hate to see anyone else go through it. ANGELIKA AMON Let us talk this through carefully. I have a dinner at 6:30 tonight but should be done by 8:30 - 9pm. Unfortunately I do not have time for the rest of the week. KRISTIN KNOUSE I’m happy to talk whenever is convenient for you. I also do not want to add an additional burden on top of all you’re going through so I can also pursue the ombuds office, etc for advice. When it all began I tried to stop it and he said to relax, it was no big deal, and at that point it seemed most career-preserving to just go with it. I’m sorry about this shitshow and I cannot thank you enough for your understanding and support. During a subsequent meal at the Catalyst restaurant in Cambridge with Amon and one of Knouse’s friends, Knouse briefly discussed her complicated sexual encounters with Sabatini. She was conflicted about what to do - whether to cut it off or continue so as not to provoke him. Amon had raised the point that reporting sexual misconduct was unlikely to go well for her. “There was a lot of internal agonizing,’’ recalled the friend. Sabatini told the Globe that Knouse occasionally implied through the end of 2019 that she wanted a deeper connection with him. Around Jan. 1, 2020, Sabatini told a friend as well as his brother, Bernardo, that Knouse had come to his office at the end of December to say she wanted more from him and from their relationship — that they should become a real couple.
David Sabatini (right) and his brother, Bernardo, a neuroscience professor at Harvard who has been a vocal supporter of David since his career imploded, including on social media. David Sabatini (right) and his brother, Bernardo, a neuroscience professor at Harvard who has been a vocal supporter of David since his career imploded, including on social media. (Bob O''Connor) “What???” the friend replied by text. “Yup she said she does not need a ring though,” Sabatini wrote. He later said he told Knouse that he did not know what he really wanted. Bernardo Sabatini had spent time with his brother and Knouse. He had never seen them kiss or hold hands, but he believed there was an affinity between them. Sabatini told the Globe that he never told his brother or anyone else that he and Knouse had a sexual relationship. Bernardo asked his brother if he wanted to bring Knouse to his New Year’s party. No, he didn’t. Sabatini was interested in someone else. Advertisement
As career soars, a love interest abroad In his work life, Sabatini was as busy as ever. His stature was only rising on the international scene. In 2018 and 2019, he was the senior author on 10 scientific papers and had his name on eight others. As always, he hustled among speaking engagements. He was also a valued member of Whitehead. In 2019, he was part of the institute’s search for a new director, which ultimately selected Lehmann, a highly respected German-born scientist who had worked at Whitehead in the 1980s and 1990s, before directing the Skirball Institute in New York. She would be the second woman to lead the 40-year-old Whitehead. As 2019 wound down, concerning news out of China foretold the coming pandemic. Sabatini also had other things on his mind. He began wondering about the possibility of a new romantic relationship. In the year since Pernas had left his lab for Germany, Sabatini had stayed in touch with her. He thought they had personal chemistry. In early 2020, Sabatini was hoping to see Pernas on a trip to Cologne for a conference. Was it possible they could begin a romance? He intended to find out. Sabatini was frank with Knouse, brutally so, about his interest in another woman. They discussed it in a raw text exchange over several days in mid-January, while Sabatini traveled to Germany. KRISTIN KNOUSE I think more of what I was trying to get at yesterday and what keeps biting at me is that when I come down from investing a lot of concern, thought, and effort into trying to help you I’m left wondering whether you would put in that same amount for me and not certain there would be a point when you care enough about a relationship to fight for it and give it the amount of effort I would want and deserve to be happy. Surely connection matters but so too does effort. No need to discuss now but worth thinking about over time. DAVID SABATINI Kk I don’t have the energy or bandwidth to get into this right now. She wrote the next day to thank him for some restaurant recommendations. He didn’t respond. Hours later, she wrote again to say she had been re-evaluating their secret relationship and did not like what she saw. KRISTIN KNOUSE I get anxious when I don’t hear back from you and then I see you post stuff on Twitter and it provides an admittedly small and silly but still another bit of evidence to this growing feeling that you don’t care about me in the way that I care about you. I think I’ve been harboring but suppressing this sense of inequality and pain for a long time with adverse consequences for my focus, productivity, and happiness. I know you don’t intend for this and it may be entirely situational. I also know you don’t want to deal with this right now and I don’t want to keep bothering you but I also can’t afford to or deserve to keep feeling like this. My only thought is for me to pull away and cut contact, despite how much I want to be there for you. DAVID SABATINI I am sorry but you are being crazy. Between a day of meetings and jet lag I found a minute to retweet [a lab member’s] review. Please stop. KRISTIN KNOUSE It hurt to be called crazy for trying to care and express how I feel. I care about you a lot and always want to do whatever I can to help. But clearly in practice it was harder than I anticipated to be invested in that while also respecting your need for space and exploration and I’m sorry to both of us for all of the anxiety that came forward. Having time to reflect and refocus over the past few days definitely helped and I hope that continues to be true for both of us in the coming weeks with travel. I hope European time has been good for you. DAVID SABATINI I am sorry but I just want some peace. I told you where I am mentally and your text did not help. You need to chill out and let fate take its course. DAVID SABATINI Things with Lena have been interesting and fun. Yes we have kissed and discussed more but nothing has happened. I need to spend more time with her to understand what we mean to each other but unclear how that will happen unless I spend more time here. KRISTIN KNOUSE I appreciate you being honest. I’ll be honest and say it definitely hurts to validate some of my anxieties in light of our closeness and discussions over the past few weeks. It seems like this will be something that won’t be resolved with just another day there? Sabatini said he wasn’t sure if he could resolve his feelings during that trip and might schedule another. Later, Knouse asked, “Do you feel like you would have the same intellectual/ambition connection with her like we have? It seems like that would be one difference and it’s a question of what you want in your partner.” “I don’t know. You are very different,” he replied. She informed him she wanted to know “where things stand” upon the end of his trip. After more back and forth, she wrote again, saying that she had spoken about Sabatini with Amon, her mentor, and that Amon was “worried you’re just as insecure and intimidated by me as all the other guys I’ve dated.” “I’m not sure what made her say that,” Knouse wrote, “but I think it’s worth thinking about whether you want someone who matches your passion, intellect and ambition and thereby pushes, challenges, and shares in that with you. I certainly want that because it helps me become the best and fullest version of myself.” Sabatini wrote back, “Everyone is entitled to their hypotheses. I would rather table these discussions until a later date. Thank you.” “Of course,” she replied, and asked him to respect her feelings. “I have been 100% honest with you about my current state of mind,” he responded. “Please give me some space as a friend.” Sabatini wrote to Knouse on Jan. 19, on his way home to the United States. He and Pernas had decided to try to have a relationship, despite the distance. “I hope you can understand that where I am mentally I have to explore this,” he wrote. “I also hope that you can see to being my friend first and foremost just as I am for you.” KRISTIN KNOUSE I understand and wish you the best in figuring this out. But I think it’s best we remove ourselves from each other’s lives for the foreseeable future. DAVID SABATINI Of course I understand Kristin. I will always wish the best for you. KRISTIN KNOUSE The only certainty in your life, now and forever, is that you love your son and your lab more than anything else. Be careful not to abandon them despite your current mental state. Take care. Their secret, forbidden relationship was over. The fallout had yet to begin. Read part two: A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science To reach the Spotlight Team staff members who worked on this piece, please write to [email protected] or call 617-929-7483 or individually at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
Part 2：https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/spotlight/2023/01/fallen-star/shaken-citadel-science/?event=event12 A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science Kristin Sabatini photo illustration Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini, both biologists, had an intimate relationship that bridged boundaries — she is young in her career, he is globally renowned — and broke the rules at Cambridge’s Whitehead Institute. After Knouse alleged harassment and other complaints emerged, an investigation rocked Whitehead, forced out Sabatini and damaged all involved. Did it have to end this way? This series was reported by Meghan E. Irons, Mark Arsenault, and Spotlight editor Patricia Wen. This story was written by Irons. Published Jan. 28, 2023 The two women from Whitehead Institute sat at a quiet table outside Tatte Bakery & Cafe in Kendall Square on Oct. 19, 2020, trying hard to extend their small talk before the conversation turned serious. Ruth Lehmann, who had started as Whitehead’s director only a few months earlier, had brought along her Australian shepherd, who lazed on the sidewalk. Sitting with her was Kristin Knouse, one of the institute’s young, talented researchers who, during this conversation, could barely suppress her nerves. Her future was at stake — and maybe that of others. Previous Read part one Inside the fall of a star MIT scientist Lehmann had set up this meeting to resolve a mystery: Why was Knouse, then 32, leaving Whitehead prematurely, midway through her prestigious five-year fellowship? It was a stunning step; it made no sense. Lehmann, an award-winning germ cell biologist, had built a career in a male-dominated field and championed the success of young scientists like Knouse. On her first day as Whitehead director that July, she had promised to foster “a culture of excellence” and about a week later, commissioned a firm to conduct a diversity, equity, and inclusion survey of all staff. She couldn’t know it at the time, but the survey would, in tandem with other concerns voiced by staff, have seismic consequences.
Ruth Lehmann outside the Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge in early July 2020, just days after taking over as its new director. Ruth Lehmann outside the Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge in early July 2020, just days after taking over as its new director. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff) She was aiming to improve the work environment of the place, and facing sobering realities. The National Institutes of Health, a major government source of grants for Whitehead, had threatened fiscal penalties for institutions that didn’t transparently, and vigorously, address issues of sexual harassment and misconduct. This came after a 2018 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found pervasive discrimination against women in science. Since the report, institutions nationwide had begun removing the names of over 100 scientists accused of sexual harassment and other misconduct from grants and awards funded by NIH. “I hope that we can undertake honest, productive, and difficult conversations together,’’ said Lehmann, then 65, in an email to all employees on her first day as the head of Whitehead. Lehmann knew that cultural change would come hard, because it meant dealing with issues endemic to the large, modern science labs that have turbo-charged this region’s economy. For decades, some researchers have complained that the labs often become imperious environments driven by the personality and priorities of the lab leader — the so-called principal investigator or P.I. Young scientists can become dependent on these research stars for career advancement and often feel they have little recourse if they have complaints. That day at Tatte, Knouse couldn’t bring herself to unload her own complaint, couldn’t tell Lehmann that her anguish was all about one of those scientific stars — David Sabatini — and how, over time, her view of their complicated relationship had changed. She had come to see him as the source of her despair. Advertisement As far as the outside world could see, she and Sabatini were colleagues and friends, but the truth was that, off and on for more than a year, they had had about a dozen secret sexual liaisons — secret because, beyond wanting to avoid eyebrow-raising gossip, they knew that such relationships between scientists in their positions were strictly forbidden at the Whitehead. The two had bonded at first over their shared love of science — he had been her teacher and mentor — and good whiskey. And then, in an arrangement that she later told confidantes caused her increasing unease, they had casual and clandestine sex. All along, they had agreed their relationship wasn’t exclusive, that they could see others. And he had, taking up with an American scientist based in Germany who had briefly worked in his lab. When he told Knouse about it in early 2020, she spoke of hurt and ended the relationship. Her emotions evolved to something else. It was not about jealousy or disappointed hopes, according to friends who spoke to her then. Over time, she had become hardened in her view that Sabatini had exploited her, and that, she believed, he had a pattern of pursuing other young female scientists who craved his professional blessing. For this reason, she sought to leave Whitehead. She also wanted to expose the powerful scientist she believed might hurt other vulnerable women. Sabatini has said to the Globe that he never exploited his power in any way with Knouse, or any other woman. In the meeting with Lehmann that day, Knouse found it hard to contemplate, much less talk about something so painful, so confusing, and so long a secret. She was frightened, as she told trusted colleagues, of the likely backlash.
Kristin Knouse, shown here in 2021, studies how tissues sense and respond to damage to help develop novel treatments for a range of human diseases. Kristin Knouse, shown here in 2021, studies how tissues sense and respond to damage to help develop novel treatments for a range of human diseases. (Video by MIT Department of Biology) And so when Lehmann asked why she was leaving, the younger scientist said only that she had experienced “harassment” that had deeply affected her mental health. She didn’t say what kind of harassment, or by whom. Knouse’s allegation, though initially vague, landed like a ticking time bomb in Lehmann’s lap. After decades immersed in laboratory life, she knew that sexual harassment against women in science was all too common and that any probe would inevitably convulse the workplace, unleashing forces that could blow up into lawsuits, disruption, and truth-twisting social media storms. Lehmann had only met Knouse once before, briefly, at a work retreat. By the next month, November, Lehmann appeared to know much more. She seemed to have some idea that Knouse intended to make a complaint about Sabatini, according to e-mails between Knouse and Lehmann reviewed by the Globe. Soon, more of Knouse’s account, full of nuance and complications and assertions that Sabatini furiously disputes, would emerge.
A sisterhood There were good reasons why it seemed unthinkable for Knouse to leave Whitehead, and to name Sabatini as the root of her growing pain. The institute is one of the world’s leading centers for biomedical research, a powerful draw for the best minds in the field, the capstone for a career. Very few young, aspiring scientific superstars — and Knouse was surely one — would walk away from such an opportunity. For Knouse, even though her lab was still small, getting to a place like Whitehead and working with internationally renowned researchers had been the fulfillment of a long-held dream, though she wasn’t one of those precocious souls who had known since childhood that science was the center of their world. Growing up in Allentown, Pa., she told the Globe, she didn’t have many strong female professional role models; her mother was largely a stay-at-home mom raising her and her two younger siblings. She had imagined she might be a medical doctor, like her father. But a summer high school science enrichment program lit the spark, and her undergraduate studies at Duke and graduate work at the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program only confirmed her love of biological research — and her uncommon gift for the work. She became fascinated by the liver’s capacity to regenerate after injury, and wondered whether unpacking that mystery could help in the treatment of other organs. “There was a fire inside me for this,’’ Knouse told the Globe, in her first of two interviews since her role in the Sabatini controversy became public. (Knouse declined several previous requests for interviews, but ultimately consented on the condition that her lawyers be present and that she would not publicly discuss her relationship with Sabatini due to his pending defamation case against her.)
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini shown together in a selfie, taken in February 2018, two months before their friendship would include a sexual dimension. Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini shown together in a selfie, taken in February 2018, two months before their friendship would include a sexual dimension. (Provided by David Sabatini) Taking on Sabatini was hard for her. Beyond the fact of their sexual entanglement, he had been at times a special mentor to her, and having an influential patron is critical to success in the rarefied upper echelons of science. She also knew he would insist — and he did — that their sexual relationship was entirely consensual, and that his past record shows deep respect and support for female scientists. She worried about whether she could prosper at Whitehead or anywhere, if she angered Sabatini and he turned on her. “If I launch an investigation and he DOESN’T get fired, my life will be hell,” she said to a lab member in a text obtained by the Globe. Knouse’s resentment of Sabatini intensified when she summoned the nerve, sometime in 2019, to open up about her feelings to a handful of other women at Whitehead. They were part of an informal sisterhood that had evolved within this 40-year-old biomedical research institute, and they often traded exasperated text messages at all hours. They also confided in one another outside the lab, while jogging or kayaking or sipping cocktails. These women were mostly young, from diverse backgrounds, and in the early stages of their careers. Their presence at Whitehead highlighted some recent successes in diversity and inclusion efforts at the institute. Women now represent about half of the total employee pool at Whitehead, though they make up only a quarter of its principal investigators and fellows. When some of the women got together socially, all kinds of subjects were on the table, including their uncomfortable experiences involving Sabatini and the offensive edge of some of the discourse in his lab, according to interviews and texts reviewed by the Globe. There was talk of advice they had received from other researchers to “play hard to get” with him to get his support and about his eye for attractive women in the lab. POSTDOC 1 The only way to get david to like you as a woman is if you sexually appeal to him. POSTDOC 2 🤮🤮🤮🤮 POSTDOC 1 (I mean act in a way that suggests to him you find him in some way attractive or whatever) POSTDOC 2 no way hahaha POSTDOC 2 I will keep beating him POSTDOC 1 Actually, there is another way if you are extremely smart and impress him with that, but then he will still make fun of you in other ways POSTDOC 2 hahaha yeah POSTDOC 2 and never agree with you POSTDOC 1 And I’m clearly not smart enough for that 😆 Note: Text exchanges between individuals in this story are animated. Disable animation. In the fall of 2020, Knouse and other women took part in Whitehead’s zoom viewing of a newly released documentary, “Picture a Scientist.” It was about the decades-long struggle by women in science for equity and respect, and featured retired MIT molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins, as well as a former BU graduate student, Jane Willenbring, whose sexual harassment allegations against geologist David Marchant led to his firing in 2019. After the viewing, Knouse thought to herself, as she recalled to the Globe, “It is wrong for me to stay quiet.” She mulled her next steps methodically and anticipated how she would likely be portrayed. KRISTIN KNOUSE I mean he legally cannot retaliate but basically he could go on twitter and call me a scorned ex lover then that’s out there it can’t be unsaid. FORMER LAB MEMBER And he can shit talk you to his friends, and if all they’re hearing is his side. KRISTIN KNOUSE Yup. KRISTIN KNOUSE He can say that i pursued him heavily, i went to his whiskey tastings, i flirted with him, etc. KRISTIN KNOUSE It’s all he said she said. FORMER LAB MEMBER Yep. Knouse’s texts that were shared with friends and investigators — and reviewed by the Globe — appear to document a gradual and wrenching evolution of her emotional state. Her feelings of exploitation had run alongside a wish for a more meaningful relationship with Sabatini, but then, at some point, Knouse became openly hostile, and wanted Sabatini to be held accountable. The texts are not as revealing about when her change of mind began or exactly what triggered it. Sabatini and Knouse offer sharply different accounts on this score — she saying her sense of exploitation, there from the start, only escalated over time; he saying the shift came only after she learned of his new relationship. But the texts do suggest how deeply wounded and angry Knouse had become. KRISTIN KNOUSE The past few nights I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and journaling and coming to terms with how [expletive] toxic and damaging my entire situation with him was. I feel like I was totally brainwashed. KRISTIN KNOUSE I kept trying to escape and he would suck me back in. I’m resolved to never let it happen again. FORMER LAB MEMBER There’s a reason why [a colleague’s] husband kept asking if we were in a cult. KRISTIN KNOUSE Since I formally cut ties I honestly feel like a kid who got rescued from an old creeper’s basement. The texts show that Knouse, in the months before her meeting at Tatte with Lehmann, had brainstormed with friends about how she could confront Sabatini and see him penalized. This was all happening at a time when Knouse was losing the support and counsel of one of the strongest female scientists she knew — Angelika Amon, an MIT professor who had been her mentor since graduate school. Amon was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in 2018 and died on Oct. 29, 2020.
Kristin Knouse with her mentor, MIT cell biologist Angelika Amon, at a celebration after Knouse defended her PhD thesis in the fall of 2016, four years before Amon died of ovarian cancer. Kristin Knouse with her mentor, MIT cell biologist Angelika Amon, at a celebration after Knouse defended her PhD thesis in the fall of 2016, four years before Amon died of ovarian cancer. “She believed in me before I believed in myself,” Knouse told the Globe. Amon’s widower, Johannes Weis, said in an interview that when Knouse confided in Amon about her sexual liaisons with Sabatini, his wife was angry and upset with Sabatini, whom she had long viewed as a trusted MIT colleague. “It was abundantly clear to me that Angelika thought that this was inappropriate,’’ Weis said, “and it was David’s job not to let it happen.” As she battled cancer, Amon tried to protect Knouse, one of her top graduate students, recommending that she not file a complaint in the Whitehead system while she still worked there. “She was very worried about Kristin,’’ Weis said. “She offered guidance. But ultimately she knew it would have to be Kristin’s decision.” Knouse, as she planned next steps, had sought advice from MIT’s Ombuds office, a source of confidential counsel for MIT faculty, students, and staff, at least one Title IX lawyer, and another senior MIT professor about how she might proceed against Sabatini, according to texts and interviews.
The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is affiliated with Whitehead Institute. All of Whitehead''s principal investigators have faculty positions at MIT. The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is affiliated with Whitehead Institute. All of Whitehead''s principal investigators have faculty positions at MIT. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) FORMER LAB MEMBER Did they offer anything helpful KRISTIN KNOUSE I mean basically that knowledge that it becomes a question of who’s more credible. KRISTIN KNOUSE He could say that he ASSURED me that i could push of his advances and that he wasn’t my direct supervisor etc etc KRISTIN KNOUSE and then he just gets a small slap on the wrist FORMER LAB MEMBER That is why sexual harassment will keep happening. The consequences aren’t severe enough to discourage it from happening. And that all ties into the perception that this isn’t as big of a problem. KRISTIN KNOUSE I know. KRISTIN KNOUSE im so demoralized right now. Knouse had received advice that, to make a strong case against Sabatini, it would help to show a pattern of inappropriate behavior. Knouse began encouraging researchers she knew who had privately complained about Sabatini to speak to Whitehead authorities; some agreed and some declined. The senior MIT professor, who knew the risks faced by women who take on powerful scientists, also later gave Knouse the name of a legal expert who could help in any protracted legal fight: former federal judge Nancy Gertner. As Knouse texted to a friend: “hopefully in a few years time i can look back and be like damn i fixed a huge systemic problem.’’ On Dec. 10, 2020, Whitehead’s diversity, equity, and inclusion survey, the culture-challenging initiative launched by Lehmann, dropped in Knouse’s e-mail box, as it did for more than 500 other employees at Whitehead. It offered a confidential way for Knouse and others to voice their concerns. It would be the beginning of Sabatini’s undoing.
A career on the rise, then trouble David Sabatini was riding high at the start of 2020. Awards and money were pouring in. He received Columbia University’s Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, often considered a precursor to the Nobel Prize because many recipients have gone on to win one. He also shared the Sjöberg Prize for significant contributions to cancer research. Sabatini’s achievements and growing renown also made him a magnet for researchers, many of whom were attracted by his high-intensity lab. They published scientific papers at a prolific pace, more than 200 since he launched his lab in 1997.
The Sjöberg Prize 2020 went to David Sabatini (right) as well as Michael N. Hall from the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. They jointly received the award ”for their discovery of mTOR and its role in the control of cell metabolism and growth.” The Sjöberg Prize 2020 went to David Sabatini (right) as well as Michael N. Hall from the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. They jointly received the award ”for their discovery of mTOR and its role in the control of cell metabolism and growth.” (Sjöberg Prize) “There was a great esprit de corps in the lab,” said one member who was there in the years leading up to Sabatini’s fall. “It was great to be around that energy.” Sabatini’s personal life was also taking off as well — and he married for the second time. He had fallen in love with Lena Pernas, the researcher based in Germany who had briefly worked in his lab. Sabatini told some in his lab that the two had a “crazy connection.” He made plans to visit her overseas. In the last days of 2020, Pernas traveled to Cambridge. On Dec. 29, she and Sabatini appeared in the Cambridge city clerk’s office and married. Pernas did not respond to a Globe request for comment. But amid these moments of happiness, ominous clouds were building around Sabatini’s lab. By early 2021, as the diversity, equity, and inclusion survey and a pair of other complaints came into HR around the same time, Lehmann and other administrators began to suspect one of Whitehead’s top labs may have a toxic underside. It was abundantly clear to me that Angelika thought that this was inappropriate, and it was David’s job not to let it happen.” Johannes Weis, Angelika Amon''s widower The first signs of trouble became clear when Jones Diversity, the firm hired by Whitehead to direct the survey, began to tally the input of 225 staffers who anonymously completed it — representing roughly 40 percent of the workforce. While most addressed Whitehead’s work culture generally, three anonymous respondents singled out Sabatini. Among them was a “white male graduate student” who said that Sabatini tolerated a particular visiting scientist who routinely made sexist and racist remarks. Another of the complainants was Knouse, the Globe has confirmed, and the third was a female trainee who did not work in Sabatini’s lab. Separate from the survey, two female researchers who trained with Sabatini spoke to the human resource department in January 2021, according to the Whitehead investigative report, which kept their names anonymous. One of the women, a former postdoc, told Whitehead officials that she was not treated as a scientist, but as a “female scientist.” She felt she was seen as a “potential person to date” in Sabatini’s lab. She said that Sabatini, at a work retreat, asked her to “pick” between two male postdocs and was once asked by him whether she was romantically interested in his brother, Bernardo, a Harvard neuroscience professor. The other was a former MIT graduate student who reported a “culture of competition” in the lab, but for the wrong reasons, the investigative report said. She told human resource officials that Sabatini showed more personal attention to “attractive” lab members and that female trainees deliberately “flirt a little” with Sabatini because they believe it will boost their careers. Several other women in the Sabatini lab at the time, however, told the Globe that Sabatini never fostered a sexualized environment. “It’s unequivocally not true,” said one woman from the lab. But the complaints of the two scientists to Whitehead human resources — both well-respected and more senior than Knouse — carried credibility with administrators and had legal impact. Lehmann, now faced with credible sexual harassment complaints against a named individual and the DEI survey results, was legally compelled to investigate. Meanwhile, Jones Diversity reported its survey’s findings to Whitehead leadership. It scheduled a Zoom presentation for principal investigators and fellows to explain the results on March 25, 2021.
An investigation begins Both Sabatini and Knouse were among those on the Zoom screen, looking at slides displaying statistics and quotes. The overall DEI results found that the “culture within the Whitehead community is not inclusive for all. Women and people of color feel significantly less included than white males.” The survey, focus groups, and interviews also documented that “the laboratory environment” was a particular area of concern. More than 30 percent said they heard “offensive language,” about topics such as race, LGBTQ status, and gender, among others. The primary source of offensive language was the institute’s most powerful players, its principal investigators, the survey said. Whitehead DEI survey results 31% Percentage of survey respondents who said, in the past three years, they have heard someone at work make offensive comments involving issues such as race, age,weight, LGBTQ status and gender. 28% Percentage of people of color who felt they “need to hide a part of their identity” to assimilate at Whitehead, about twice that of white respondents. 54% Percentage of administrative and support staff who said they felt comfortable reporting offensive comments to leadership, but only 11 percent of scientific researchers felt the same, suggesting a more tenuous connection to the institution. Source: Whitehead Institute and Jones Diversity, which conducted the DEI survey. Sabatini attended the Zoom from Germany, where his new wife lived. He told the Globe he had no idea any of the survey complaints were focused on him. Later that day, Knouse reiterated her resolve to take action against Sabatini after attending that meeting. She texted to her friend, “i am out for blood at this point,” then later added, “i’m so ready to get this over with.” Sabatini was asked to attend another Zoom meeting the next morning, with Whitehead board members Susan Hockfield, a former MIT president, and Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and a 1993 Nobel Prize winner.
Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and Nobel Prize winner, at a cancer research event in 2018. Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and Nobel Prize winner, at a cancer research event in 2018. (Daniel Boczarski) They informed him that several respondents in the survey had singled out his lab. They said Whitehead would launch an investigation into him and his lab. Sabatini replied that he always offered help to people who felt aggrieved and denied ever threatening to retaliate against them, according to Whitehead notes from the meeting. He said he had a strong record of supporting women. He was shocked by what he heard, Sabatini told the Globe. He was hearing about some of the complaints for the first time and had never imagined that some of the banter in the lab would lead to a large-scale investigation. Hockfield and Sharp did not respond to requests for comment.
Susan Hockfield, a neuroscience professor at MIT, was the first woman to become president of MIT. She served from 2004 to 2012. Susan Hockfield, a neuroscience professor at MIT, was the first woman to become president of MIT. She served from 2004 to 2012. (David Sella) Meanwhile, Lehmann, early in her tenure at Whitehead, was facing a nightmarish personnel crisis around one of the institute’s most prominent scientists who brought in massive research dollars. She wrote to Sabatini outlining the concerns raised by “the survey and other sources.” She said outside investigators would seek to interview members of his lab or others who may have helpful information. And, in what would prove to be a test of whether she could trust him, she explicitly ordered him not to try to interfere with the investigation in any way. “We strongly advise you to refrain from asking anyone in your lab whether they have met with the investigator, plan to do so or the content of what they communicated,’’ Lehmann wrote. “Failure to abide by these strong recommendations will be considered a serious breach of trust.” About six weeks later, an official from one of Sabatini’s principal funders, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, notified Sabatini they had been informed that the Whitehead probe also included sexual misconduct and harassment allegations. The complaints of Knouse — and others — had been heard.
The escalation Many powerful figures in Sabatini’s situation might have responded to such a potentially career-destroying crisis with contrition and humility. And some institutions, faced with accusations about an accomplished longtime employee, might have sought or negotiated a compromise disciplinary path. In this case, neither Sabatini nor Whitehead opted for moderation. Sabatini told the Globe that his lab had developed a vibrant culture and that he felt no need for apologies. Lehmann would not comment on whether Whitehead leadership had considered a less confrontational legal option — anything short of a full investigation by a law firm. The probe stretched over five months. The law firm hired by Whitehead, Hinckley Allen, assigned three lawyers to investigate the culture of the lab and Sabatini’s leadership. The lawyers interviewed more than 40 people and collected more than one million records, including e-mails, texts, and Slack messages, pulled from Whitehead’s IT system.
From left, William Sinnott, former corporation counsel in Boston, Tara Singh, and Elizabeth McEvoy were the team of lawyers from Hinckley Allen to conduct the investigation of David Sabatini and his lab. From left, William Sinnott, former corporation counsel in Boston, Tara Singh, and Elizabeth McEvoy were the team of lawyers from Hinckley Allen to conduct the investigation of David Sabatini and his lab. (Handout/Hinckley Allen) Sabatini said his sense of alarm began to grow about a week after the probe began. Though Lehmann had told him not to speak to lab members about the investigation, he did have conversations with some employees and learned that lawyers had asked tough questions that seemed aimed at him. Sabatini also had to know that something he had kept secret — the fact of his past sexual relationship with Knouse — could blow up at any time with potentially damaging consequences. Such a relationship was strictly barred under Whitehead policies, and of course he knew that, too. That Knouse might reveal the secret could not have surprised Sabatini. The space between Knouse and Sabatini had grown hostile since the investigation began, as she had virtually stopped talking to him and moved her lab office — previously next to Sabatini’s — to a different floor. But if there was any doubt in his mind, it likely evaporated shortly after the probe began. Two of the top litigators in the city, Gertner, the former federal judge, and Ellen Zucker, a high-powered lawyer who handles many employment cases, notified Sabatini that they had been retained by Knouse and may be filing a potential harassment and retaliation case after the Whitehead investigation was over. With the lawyers on board, Whitehead and MIT were also put on notice; the stakes had been exponentially raised. But even then, Sabatini said, he did not see this for the existential threat it was. He said he banked on his own sense of what was true — and on his trust in his colleagues to put the complaints in proper perspective. “I had a feeling that, OK, this is my home,’’ he said, of Whitehead, during a Globe interview. “I’ve been here forever. I’ve done lots of good and this will be fine.” He said he asked to speak to Lehmann as the investigation began, but Lehmann declined, saying she wanted to let the investigation play out. Sabatini soon hired Cambridge lawyer Todd Bennett to advise him. Advertisement Morale inside the lab plummeted. A number of former lab members who were questioned in the investigation told the Globe that they left their interviews shellshocked by the aggressive tone of the questions they were asked. “It felt like the lawyers came with a thesis already made,” said one former lab member. A Whitehead staff member said several Sabatini lab members confided in him, saying they felt “they would be personally in trouble if they didn’t give the answer these lawyers were looking for.” “A couple of people said they wrote to Ruth [Lehmann] to say it was a manipulated process, and they felt harmed by it,” he said. Lehmann acknowledged that some lab members raised concerns about the Hinckley investigation, and she was later assured, after speaking to the investigators, that they were making every effort to “minimize stress” in the lab. Investigators interviewed Sabatini three times, Knouse twice. In the first of those sessions, she revealed her sexual interactions with Sabatini; it was the first time investigators said they learned of the liaisons. When they later questioned Sabatini about this revelation, he then admitted that he took part in it and depicted it as a consensual relationship between colleagues. Meanwhile, even though ordered by Lehmann not to interfere with the investigation, Sabatini did more than just speak to some lab members. He also acknowledged to the Globe he showed several of them a sample of the texts Knouse had sent him in early 2020 when she wrote of wanting a deeper relationship with him. Sabatini insisted to the Globe that he did not obstruct the investigation. He said that after hearing comments from members about their interviews with investigators, he had merely asked them whether they thought the probe was really about lab culture. A former member of his lab told the Globe he believed Sabatini had reached out to other lab members out of concern, after being told that some were “freaking out.” The investigators submitted the report to Whitehead executives on Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, and then to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and MIT.
A scathing report The investigative report resounded like a thunderclap. It stretched over 248 pages and painted a scathing portrait of Sabatini. There were only a limited number of positive references to him, citing his scientific brilliance and leadership of an intense, hard-charging lab bent on breakthrough findings. Investigators noted that the vast majority of lab members did not complain and that negative experiences were confined to a smaller number of lab members, among them “females and diverse members.”
The Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge. The Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) Still, in the main, it was an unrelentingly negative depiction of Sabatini as a man who acted as if the rules didn’t apply to him. It cited Sabatini for enabling — and participating — in a gossip-filled environment with uncomfortable sexual overtones, and included specific examples. High up in the report, they accused him of obstruction, for engaging with lab members in violation of Lehmann’s directive, and there was also the critical question of Sabatini’s credibility. It is a sphere in which they deemed him wanting. He was depicted in the report as “not credible” during his three interviews, even when presented with texts or other information to contradict his accounts. For instance, according to investigators, Sabatini allegedly denied making a comment about preferring European women to American women because they talked more freely about sex, but was later presented with e-mails or texts suggesting he had. Sabatini later would tell the Globe that investigators had asked him about incidents in the past that he simply couldn’t immediately recall. It was clear that in the credibility contest between Sabatini and Knouse, the investigators overall believed Knouse. They also said they did not think she was motivated as a spurned lover to speak out. Investigators said they did not find that Knouse had disclosed her sexual relationship with Sabatini to damage his reputation. They said they believed that “she felt trapped and obligated to Sabatini because he was her Fellow mentor and senior scientist.” Investigators, for example, found credible Knouse’s assertion that it was Sabatini who was the initiator of almost all their proposed or actual sexual encounters. And that she was pressured to have sex with him in the fall of 2018 when she was a fellow on her first Whitehead retreat in New Hampshire. Sabatini admitted they had sex once at that retreat, at least several months after their first encounter, but told investigators that Knouse initiated it, and subsequent texts turned over to investigators represented their efforts to arrange for it. He also said that she never expressed misgivings. Knouse produced texts showing he requested sex three times beginning before the retreat when he inquired of her, “Maybe a discrete consult in NH?” She also shared a text showing she told him she was reluctant to go along, citing “(a)ggressive policies, pre-existing target on my back, residence at the bottom of the food chain, and rooming with other fellows leaves so little room.” The investigators reviewed many texts between the two, but not nearly all of them. Sabatini turned over all of his after the end of 2019, that is, after the sexual liaisons were over. He said prior texts were on another phone he no longer has. Knouse turned over a selection of her texts from the whole span of her relationship with Sabatini, focused on those that support her version of events. Newsletter: The Globe Investigates Sign up to receive Spotlight reports and special projects in your inbox. Email [email protected] SUBMIT Knouse had also told them of seemingly contradictory emotions about Sabatini, sometimes apparently wanting more from him, other times complaining about being exploited. She “stated that her comments reflected her mixed and complex feelings for Sabatini at that time. (Knouse) told investigators that part of her wanted to be in a real, not simply sexual relationship with Sabatini, but that ... she knew that the ongoing sexual relationship with Sabatini had been the source of her deep mental health struggles, lack of productivity, and unhappiness.” The report details the starkly diverging narratives from Knouse and Sabatini about what led them to have sex for the first time April 18, 2018, in Sabatini’s hotel room at Maryland’s Rockville Hotel after a night of drinking and dinner at a restaurant in Washington D.C. According to Knouse, she was coaxed that night to lie on the bed next to him, even as she told him that this was a bad idea. When she recounted the reasons, including professional ones, she said he got angry and impatient. She said she felt she could not say no to him because of his stature in the field, and potential influence on her career, and eventually yielded to having sex. She said that she continued to acquiesce and have sex with him on other occasions, but that her mind was full of mixed feelings. According to Sabatini, the entire sexual encounter was mutual from the start, and he had no recollection of her protesting for any reason. He has told the Globe that he had considered Knouse a good friend. He said he believed that Knouse, a woman in her early 30s who now ran her own lab, would have been comfortable saying no if she didn’t want to have sex with him and that he would have respected that. The investigators made no findings on whether the relationship was consensual, saying it was not part of their mandate. But the investigators said Sabatini and Knouse both violated Whitehead policies barring all principal investigators from having a romantic or sexual relationship with any Whitehead employee, even of the same high level. They did note that Sabatini was a more significant offender due to the status difference between them. He was a tenured faculty member 20 years her senior who still held some official “mentor” roles in her professional career. In conclusion, the investigators placed Sabatini at the center of the blame, writing: “These findings, in the aggregate, portray a high-achieving but troubled laboratory led by a brilliant but personally flawed and immature scientist whose management of a diverse, talented and vulnerable workforce is inconsistent, arbitrary and, at times, lacking in professionalism and social awareness.”
A rapid-fire ending Sabatini received the report on Aug. 19, 2021, about six days after it was first released to Whitehead. Within a day of his receiving it, Sabatini’s career imploded. He told the Globe that he was stunned by the harsh judgments of the report, believing that after 24 years running one of the top labs at Whitehead, he would be given a chance to defend himself against the report’s conclusions. He was given opportunities to meet with his superiors, but Sabatini saw them as formalities, not a credible offer to hear his side. He was out within a day — beyond warp speed in the world of academic discipline. Hours after receiving the report, Sabatini got an e-mail from Erin O’Shea, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, asking him to be part of a meeting the next day, on Aug. 20, at 1 p.m. Lehmann was also scheduled to be part of the same scheduled meeting. That morning around 10:30, the Whitehead board of directors voted to empower a subcommittee of seven members to rule on Lehmann’s conclusion about what should happen with Sabatini. That panel voted unanimously “to affirm the recommendation of the President to terminate David Sabatini as a Member of the Institute on Aug. 20, 2021 unless her recommendation changes.” The subcommittee included not just Lehmann, Hockfield, and Sharp, but three prominent members of the business community and MIT economic professor Paul Joskow.
David Sabatini''s belongings from his Whitehead lab were dropped off at his home in Cambridge shortly after he resigned in August 2021. David Sabatini''s belongings from his Whitehead lab were dropped off at his home in Cambridge shortly after he resigned in August 2021. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) Sabatini told the Globe he learned from his lawyer he was going to be fired at the 1 p.m. meeting. Lehmann, though, told the Globe the purpose of the meeting was “to hear David’s side of the story.” She added, “He could have asked for the opportunity to provide further information.” But Sabatini did not show up at the meeting. Around 11:50 a.m., he sent separate e-mails to Lehmann and O’Shea, saying he was resigning. Lehmann e-mailed back and accepted his resignation. But O’Shea rejected his resignation and fired him instead, saying in a letter that it was “for cause” and “due to violations of Whitehead Institute and HHMI policies, practices and principles.” Meanwhile, officials at MIT informed Sabatini that they had received the Whitehead report and that he was being put on unpaid administrative leave while administrators reviewed next steps, including whether to revoke his tenure. “The report raises very serious concerns about sexual and workplace harassment,’’ wrote Nergis Mavalvala, MIT’s dean of science, in a letter to the biology faculty. The news threw the Sabatini lab on the sixth floor of the Whitehead Institute into total chaos, as lab members scrambled to save their research projects and figure out if they had a job anymore. This place where lab experiments once hummed, where scientists hoped to break new ground and find cures for cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s, went quiet.
Lawsuits, but new hopes Sabatini’s paychecks stopped. His mail slot was stuffed daily with notices from organizations cutting ties with him. He learned that his membership in the National Academy of Sciences was being reviewed in light of the allegations. Sabatini hired prominent Boston litigator Lisa Arrowood to help set the record straight, at least as he saw it. He felt his only recourse for a fair hearing was in the courts. In October 2021, Sabatini filed a civil defamation lawsuit in state court, depicting Knouse and Lehmann as conspiring to bring him down and using the DEI survey as a pretext.
David Sabatini, responding to e-mail at his home in Cambridge in the fall of 2022. David Sabatini, responding to e-mail at his home in Cambridge in the fall of 2022. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) “My life was 100 percent destroyed,” he told the Globe. “This disrupted the lives of ... all my family members. ... My father will die before this is cleared up. So how am I supposed to get my life back other than to get the truth out there?” Knouse later filed a countersuit, alleging sexual harassment and retaliation. On social media, people in and outside academia either railed against Sabatini or fiercely defended him. He saw support from some prominent academics who questioned his treatment by Whitehead. The former dean of Harvard Medical Center, Jeffrey Flier, asked on Twitter, shortly after Sabatini’s ousting, if Sabatini had received a fair hearing. Harvey Lodish, one of the founding members of Whitehead, told the Globe he believed Sabatini’s punishment was too extreme. Then, a number of weeks after the scandal exploded, in the fall of 2021, Sabatini had a welcome phone conversation with a friend that led him to think, perhaps, his future as a scientist wasn’t totally destroyed. She was Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, an academic medical center in Manhattan, and a cancer researcher who knows Sabatini’s father, a former head of the cell biology department at NYU.
Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, helped lead efforts to see if the university might create a position for David Sabatini. Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, helped lead efforts to see if the university might create a position for David Sabatini. (Sylvain Gaboury) After hearing Sabatini out, Bar-Sagi thought the public version of the Sabatini story was, at the very least, incomplete. She cared about the treatment and advancement of women in science, and also knew from experience that relationships and lab culture issues can be complex. “I just felt that maybe there is more to the story than meets the eye,” she said in an interview. Given Sabatini’s scientific skill, she said she believed he could be valuable at NYU, but only if leadership at the school felt comfortable after reviewing the allegations. Sabatini arranged through lawyers to provide NYU with Whitehead’s confidential investigative report, letters, texts, and e-mails. In the coming months, NYU’s vetting of Sabatini fell largely to Bar-Sagi, two other top female executives, and an outside law firm. Bar-Sagi said she began by speaking to some former Sabatini trainees, as well as professional colleagues who knew Sabatini and his mentees. She said she came to think that the depiction of Sabatini’s lab as having a “toxic” atmosphere was wrong. The team also thought the penalty applied to Sabatini was out of proportion, based on their preliminary review. They brought their initial findings to Ken Langone, chair of NYU Langone Health. My life was 100 percent destroyed. This disrupted the lives of ... all my family members. ... My father will die before this is cleared up. So how am I supposed to get my life back other than to get the truth out there?” David Sabatini “In our opinion, due process had not applied,” Langone told the Globe. “We weren’t ready to make a deal with him, but we felt he was an outstanding talent and hadn’t done anything that would prohibit our interest in him.” It was a head-snapping turn of events: Top scientists at another leading research institution had reviewed the case and reached a much more forgiving conclusion, one that gave Sabatini a chance to salvage his career. NYU was considering offering him a non-tenured position for a trial period, with an out-clause so the school could freely dismiss Sabatini if more derogatory information surfaced. Opinion was not unanimous among the school’s top leaders. Some NYU faculty did not want to be second-guessing the prestigious Whitehead Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and MIT. University president Andrew Hamilton strongly recommended against bringing Sabatini on board, clearly an important voice in the controversy. On March 1, 2022, Sabatini took a train to Manhattan. He had been invited to a formal dinner thrown by the Pershing Square foundation, a charity that provides grants to young researchers. Sabatini had done volunteer work for the foundation, one of the few groups that did not cut ties with him after the scandal. When the co-founder of the foundation, billionaire philanthropist Bill Ackman, rose to offer some remarks, something surprising happened: Ackman spoke to the audience about the presumption of innocence, and David Sabatini. Imagine if it were you, Ackman urged the crowd. Imagine if someone accused you and your career was over and there was no due process or chance to defend yourself. When Ackman finished, people around the room began talking — talking about Sabatini. Word apparently spread that NYU was interested in him. By the end of April, the news reached Science magazine, which broke the story that NYU was in discussions with Sabatini over a faculty position. The backlash on campus built quickly.
Graduate students, faculty, and alumni from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine participated in a walkout in April 2022 to protest news that the school was seriously considering hiring David Sabatini. Graduate students, faculty, and alumni from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine participated in a walkout in April 2022 to protest news that the school was seriously considering hiring David Sabatini. (Dieu-Nalio Chéry/The New York Times) In late April, some 200 students and faculty from NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine poured into the streets in a high-profile demonstration against the school’s interest in Sabatini. They held handmade signs: “Say No to Sabatini,” and “Students Against Sabatini!” Hundreds of students and faculty members signed a petition to “collectively condemn NYU for the immense harm already done by even considering Sabatini’s employment.” Several dozen of Sabatini’s former mentees tried to help his cause by endorsing a letter praising Sabatini and his lab’s culture, but the signees remained anonymous, for fear of career reprisals. In any case, the letter was overshadowed by the tsunami of opposition. It was quickly obvious to NYU officials that hiring Sabatini was impossible in the face of such controversy and division. Sabatini’s hopes for a second chance evaporated. Advertisement
Epilogue Today, all seven floors of Whitehead’s red brick building are humming again. Lehmann, now past her second year as the head of Whitehead and a faculty member with her own lab, says she has pushed for new hires and better communication channels with nearby research institutes. She also speaks of a renewed focus, and action plans, to foster “an inclusive, respectful, and diverse culture that inspires individuals to achieve their full potential.” But some things haven’t changed. Whitehead has added no formal management training, or made other institution-wide changes, that would prevent the emergence of over-powerful principal investigators. While Whitehead did implement additional antiharassment training, its rules regarding consensual workplace relationships still do not provide potential violators with a way to disclose a relationship and still keep their jobs. But Lehmann insisted significant change is well underway. She has crafted Whitehead’s values statement and said Whitehead also adopted Jones Diversity’s recommendations, including for DEI training. And she said she strives for these cultural changes, while also aiming to hire the very best scientists. Knouse resigned from Whitehead in June 2021, a couple months before the investigative report was released. She now runs her own lab inside the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and is also an assistant MIT biology professor. But life over the past year has been far from easy. She has been the target of relentless attacks on Twitter as the woman who took down Sabatini. Some of the top responses to Google searches about her are about this scandal, not her science. “With every first interaction I have with someone,” she told the Globe, ”I have to think about what they’ve read about me.”
Kristin Knouse appeared at a Suffolk Superior Court hearing in December 2022 during which her lawyers sought to dismiss Sabatini''s defamation case against her, and his lawyers also sought to dismiss her counter-claim for sexual harassment. Sabatini did not appear in court that day and the judge has issued no decision yet. Kristin Knouse appeared at a Suffolk Superior Court hearing in December 2022 during which her lawyers sought to dismiss Sabatini''s defamation case against her, and his lawyers also sought to dismiss her counter-claim for sexual harassment. Sabatini did not appear in court that day and the judge has issued no decision yet. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff) “This hurts so much,” she said in an interview during which she wept periodically. Still, she works hard not to let the controversy or the ongoing court cases distract her from lab work. In November, she published a paper in Cell Genomics about her lab’s development of a novel technology that will allow researchers to investigate the function of every gene in a living mammal. Sabatini is still looking for a way to pursue his passion for scientific discovery. He jumps at the chance to talk science when his former lab members reach out. They often do, but not enough to fill all his time. He has fielded some job interest from scientific organizations interested in buying low on a distressed asset. Some are outside the US, opportunities that are hard to consider with his son living in Cambridge. “I would like to run a lab again,” he said. The ways his life has changed for the worse since the scandal are practically endless, he said. But some change is for the better. He said he has grown more empathetic and he is more appreciative of true friends than ever.
David Sabatini sat on the doorsteps at his home in Cambridge last September. David Sabatini sat on the doorsteps at his home in Cambridge last September. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) His marriage to Pernas did not survive. They separated in mid-2021, before the investigative report came out, and then divorced. He said they are still friends. One warm afternoon last summer, Sabatini sat on a bench near a fountain in a small park near his home in Cambridge, and talked longingly about the thrilling science he used to do. While he spoke, a small gray bird, a catbird, perhaps, somehow became trapped in the fountain. It beat its delicate wings against the water but could only circle the pool, like something going down the drain. “That bird is going to drown if we don’t save it,” Sabatini said. He knelt at the edge of the pool, gently scooped up the bird in his cupped hands, and set it on the ground. He said nothing, just watched the bird hop away, free. To reach the Spotlight Team staff members who worked on this piece, please write to [email protected] or call 617-929-7483 or individually at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
最初从whiskey tasting开始，不是上下级关系。第一夜看起来是 drunken one night stand, 然后也是两厢情愿，或者说也许女的更积极一些。2019年底K还发信想要确定和S的关系，被S拒绝。感觉一开始S对K就不是那么感兴趣，因为他更喜欢C。 S犯的错是对人家没意思，赶紧快刀斩乱麻，别以为friends with benefit那么容易。毕竟K想要的是婚姻。要是给不了就别招惹人家。
最初从whiskey tasting开始，不是上下级关系。第一夜看起来是 drunken one night stand, 然后也是两厢情愿，或者说也许女的更积极一些。2019年底K还发信想要确定和S的关系，被S拒绝。感觉一开始S对K就不是那么感兴趣，因为他更喜欢C。 S犯的错是对人家没意思，赶紧快刀斩乱麻，别以为friends with benefit那么容易。毕竟K想要的是婚姻。要是给不了就别招惹人家。
MIT 急于以ME2的名义开他的原因是他的每一篇论文都存在严重造假行为，换别人早就身败名裂了。而且态度恶劣，在推特上骂质疑的人都是冒热气的屎（英文也博大精深）。闹大了MIT更难看。 http://pubpeer.com/search?q=david+sabatini http://forbetterscience.com/2020/01/29/david-sabatini-tormented-by-steaming-turds/
总结：Kristin Knouse，单身白女科学家，30左右的新星，David Sabatini，离异有一娃单身白男科学家，50左右的大牛，两人同在Whitehead Lab做同事，男的比女的senior但不是直接领导关系。Whitehead有个规定，上下级不许恋爱，同级同事也不许恋爱。不过Knouse和Sabatini两人都单身，悄悄滚床单好久，Knouse还和Sabatini前妻以及儿子玩的很开心，所以Sabatini觉得是consensual relationship。后来有一天两个人分手了，但还是朋友，Sabatini认识了一个以前在他实验室工作的新姑娘，为简单起见叫C吧，C在欧洲，Sabatini和Knouse说了他喜欢上C了，准备和C发展。的确C后来来了麻省并成为Satatini第二任妻子。Knouse心有不爽，于是去了Title XI office告了Sabatini性骚扰/intimidation/toxic culture etc。MIT搞了个调查，但是似乎问的问题都是有意证明Sabatini有错误，无论Sabatini和下属怎么解释都没用。后来Sabatini决定resign，但是MIT非要在批准resign之前fire了Sabatini。Sabatini于是开始找工作，NYU给了他一个Offer，结果被200多NYU学生示威，offer被撤了。Sabatini第二任老婆也和他离婚了，现在他告Knouse defamation，被Knouse反控是retaliation并反告。结果是Sabatini现在丢了工作，Knouse被MIT雇佣，做了AP，还有Whitehead在Sabatini被fire后改了政策，说同级同事可以谈恋爱了。
原文和当事人照片在这里，前俩个是二人dating时候的合照，后面是两个文章的开头图。
贴在二楼三楼，懒得看原文的机翻也可以。
趁热搬过来看看大家怎么说，最近太闲了，专业研究八卦 :)
🔥 最新回帖
是这样，哪怕关系明面上不合理，但只要当事人能合理处理好双方之间的感情/经济关系，一般都不会闹太难看。
就好像王思聪虽然女友无数，但分手都很大方，就没有前女友撕他。
这个case估计就是男方分手的时候做的有点绝了，没有顾及到女方这么长时间尚算真心的付出（跟家人关系好算是挺有心了），可能多少也有点觉得我是大佬你能奈我何。再加上美国这边男的ghost也很常见，就没把女方的愤怒当回事。
没想到碰上一个聪明又有手段的，栽了。
看了看短信证据，lol，感觉男方是那种聪明又有魅力道德底线可能还有点低，喜欢pua实验室学生的类型，搞到学生家属都问他们实验室是不是创立了邪教。这样的话真是一点不冤了。
lz 活雷锋！辛苦辛苦
🛋️ 沙发板凳
photo illustration of David Sabatini. photo by Jonathan Wiggs /Globe Staff David Sabatini, a biologist who once generated Nobel Prize buzz, is hoping for a comeback after he was abruptly ousted amid allegations of sexual harassment. The case remains one of the most polarizing of its kind in science, and raises hard questions: Is there room for lesser penalties in such complex cases? Did Sabatini deserve a second chance? This series was reported by Mark Arsenault, Meghan E. Irons, and Spotlight editor Patricia Wen. This story was written by Arsenault.
Published Jan. 28, 2023
The 7 a.m. Acela out of South Station trembled along the rails toward Manhattan. David Sabatini sat alone on the left side of the train. He had brought along a science paper to work on, but had a lot on his mind. He kept his Wordle streak alive on his phone, and stared out at the picturesque Connecticut coastline. His clothing hung loose from recent weight loss, presumably from stress.
It was Jan. 4, 2022, a brisk sunny day. The tall, gangling scientist with a long mess of black hair had once generated Nobel Prize buzz for his discoveries in biology. But at that moment, he was unemployed in his 50s, his reputation ruined, spending many nights in his brother’s guest room or on his ex-wife’s sofa, so emotionally distraught that his family was afraid to leave him alone.
Biologist David Sabatini worked on a word puzzle at his home in Cambridge, in September. Biologist David Sabatini worked on a word puzzle at his home in Cambridge, in September. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) Sabatini was journeying to New York in search of a new beginning, an against-all-odds comeback.
For the previous six months, he had been staggering through the wreckage of his career. Seemingly overnight, in August 2021, the MIT biologist and renowned scientist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge’s Kendall Square had been forced from his research post. MIT soon after suspended him and would move to revoke his tenure.
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Read part two A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science His ouster came within 24 hours of his receiving a copy of a Whitehead investigative report accusing him of violating sexual harassment policies and of enabling a toxic and bullying atmosphere in his 40-person lab.
Deeply damaging to Sabatini was the revelation he had had a past sexual relationship with a brilliant young Whitehead scientist with a similar title but much less research experience and stature, Kristin Knouse, in her early 30s. Sabatini and Knouse had met in 2012, when she was a star student in a graduate course Sabatini co-taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They later got to know each other better through a shared love of science and fine whiskey. Their sexual encounters — which violated Whitehead’s strict relationship policy — ended with him courting another woman who used to work in his lab, and Knouse for complicated reasons turning slowly, but powerfully, against him.
The speed and totality of his downfall were stunning. In a matter of months, an illustrious lengthy career had been shattered, maybe for good.
Until the controversy erupted, Sabatini had spent 24 years at Whitehead without a misconduct allegation in his personnel file, according to a Globe review of human resource files shared by him. In fact, Sabatini had been a bright light during Boston’s emergence as the Silicon Valley for biotech. The best young scientists from across the world yearned to work in his lab, an electric place that untangled cellular mysteries critical in the study of neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging.
David Sabatini, standing to the left of the poster, and his lab members often paused to mark the personal and professional milestones of its members. In this case, the lab joins a colleague in celebrating a scientific paper appearing in a prestigious journal. David Sabatini, standing to the left of the poster, and his lab members often paused to mark the personal and professional milestones of its members. In this case, the lab joins a colleague in celebrating a scientific paper appearing in a prestigious journal. (Provided by David Sabatini) Few cases in the scientific community have been as polarizing as this one. The fiery trail of his fall raced through research centers across the country, and lit up certain corners of social media. The heat of the moment is such that many people interviewed for this story on all sides of the controversy insisted on anonymity, citing fears of social media mob attacks on their names.
Some celebrated Sabatini’s ouster as an overdue blow against the enduring boys’ club era in science, an epoch that has run roughly from Aristotle to now. Some of his scientific colleagues and many former trainees, though, contend that a great mentor was dealt a professional death sentence by institutions more interested in their public image than due process.
A Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation finds the truth about Sabatini’s fall is far more complicated than the public reports so far. There is no doubt that Sabatini showed poor judgment, sometimes profoundly poor. He knowingly violated important personnel rules, and he lost the trust of Whitehead’s chief executive.
And yet there are other ways to read what had happened and why. Investigators placed on Sabatini’s trail may have drawn overly severe conclusions in some areas, and Whitehead and Sabatini may have missed a chance for a less destructive resolution, one that didn’t cause the professional immolation of a top cell biologist and the dismantling of a world-class lab.
Sabatini’s case provides a window into the particular nature of top science labs, where leaders can have outsized and almost unquestioned power. It also raises important questions common in many workplaces today where people of diverse backgrounds increasingly work closely together and boundaries governing acceptable behavior — which inevitably shift with the times — need to be as clear as possible.
The prestigious Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square hums day and night with the biomedical research work of top scientists and their up-and-coming trainees.
The prestigious Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square hums day and night with the biomedical research work of top scientists and their up-and-coming trainees. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) The Globe’s extensive interviews and review of hundreds of documents — including a copy of Whitehead’s 248-page confidential investigative report into Sabatini’s lab, legal documents, personnel records, and private communications — also find this case may stand out less for its tabloid aspects than for the way the situation escalated.
And with all the recent hard-won progress toward equity in the workplace, this case raises questions about whether there is room for gradations in judging workplace misconduct allegations. Someplace in between the old ways, where too often the powerful faced no consequence, and our modern hair-trigger inclination toward career annihilation.
The Spotlight Team launched this investigation because the stakes in this case were so enormous for one of the nation’s leading scientists, for a young woman striving to be one, and for the Whitehead, one of Greater Boston’s and the nation’s top research citadels. It is a controversy that has received little notice outside of the academic world but within those circles has relentlessly churned and refuses to rest, opening virulent divisions in the scientific community, the bedrock of the region’s knowledge economy.
Was the outcome fair? Unfair? The dispute rages on — on social media, in discussions at scientific conferences, and in court, where Sabatini is pursuing a defamation claim against Knouse and Whitehead’s leaders, and Knouse has countersued.
Everyone touched by this episode has been damaged.
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Top young scientists recruited from around the world to the Sabatini lab were scattered and sent scrabbling to pick up their careers. Much of their unfinished work was lost. At Whitehead, discontent simmers among some faculty over the way the investigation was handled. And Knouse, who wants to someday be considered a world-renowned scientist, faces the prospect of being forever publicly associated with a scandal that has nothing to do with her intellectual gifts.
Sabatini’s appointment in Manhattan that bright winter day last year was at New York University, where his father once chaired the cell biology department.
For months, several top executives at NYU had been quietly vetting the fallen scientist for a research post. They had spoken to some of his former lab members, reviewed Whitehead’s confidential investigative report on Sabatini, and come to believe the report was an unfair depiction of his lab and Sabatini may have been over-punished.
They were contemplating something rarely seen in this kind of scandal: a second chance.
It was a closely held secret that the prestigious school was mulling an offer to Sabatini. Both sides knew that if word were to leak before the vetting was done, the controversy would almost certainly erupt anew.
A productive and provocative lab under “King David” Sabatini’s 3,000-square foot lab was lit day and night, its soundtrack the hum of cooling fans, whirling servo motors, and centrifuges. The space often smelled yeasty from cultures or acidic from chemical reactions.
Postdoctoral researchers and graduate students hired by Sabatini, generally in their 20s and 30s, sat at high benches, often mixing small amounts of clear liquids teeming with the ingredients of life. The people Sabatini brought in hired master’s students and undergrads to assist them, bringing the total lab population to 39.
Sabatini’s lab was among the largest at Whitehead, one of the nation’s leading research institutes, and routinely published work in prestigious journals, such as Nature, Science, and Cell. The lab’s budget was about $5 million, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In its early days, the lab had fewer women, but by 2021, women made up about one-third of the postdocs and graduate students. Also, roughly one out of three was an international scientist on a visa.
Scientist David Sabatini and his researchers in his lab gathered to celebrate a lab member’s thesis defense in October 2018. Scientist David Sabatini and his researchers in his lab gathered to celebrate a lab member’s thesis defense in October 2018. (Provided by David Sabatini) Women underrepresented in the top research positions at Whitehead Whitehead Institute’s gender breakdown is generally even when all staff is counted, but skews more male at the higher-level research positions, including in David Sabatini’s lab.
Whitehead Institute’s 2021 gender breakdown Employees (573)
Male 50% Female 50% Post-doc and graduate students (186)
Male 54% Female 46% Principal investigators and fellows who were heads of independent labs (22)
Male 73% Female 27% David Sabatini lab’s 2021 gender breakdown Employees (39)
Male 59% Female 41% Post-doc and graduate students (21)
Male 67% Female 33% Source: Whitehead Institute. Data from 2021 was used to reflect the last year Sabatini’s lab was open.
JOHN HANCOCK/GLOBE STAFF
Sabatini juggled many roles and three appointments with elite organizations: Aside from being a principal investigator housed at Whitehead, he was a tenured MIT professor and an investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md., and whose funding for the lab covered most of Sabatini’s roughly $380,000 salary.
As his lab’s principal investigator, Sabatini was everyone’s alpha boss and mentor; his counsel was prized and his approval meant everything. A glowing recommendation from the P.I. is key for researchers who want to ultimately open their own labs.
David Sabatini ran a lab at Whitehead Institute for 24 years. David Sabatini ran a lab at Whitehead Institute for 24 years. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff) “At any lab social gathering, whether it is happy hour, whiskey tasting, whatever, if David was there, he would just have like a little cocoon of people around him — grad students, postdocs,’’ said a former lab member who has been critical of his tenure. “That was their time to schmooze with King David.”
The lab members often worked relentlessly long hours, seven days a week, even sleeping in the lab if running overnight experiments. “The thing is, it’s not because they were forced to do that; that was something they decided to do,” said Kera Xibinaku, an Austrian biologist who in 2021 worked in the lab as a master’s student. “They loved their science, they loved being in the lab.”
Many were inspired by Sabatini’s example. He, too, obsessed over work. For someone so high up in his field, he was unusually available to his lab members, accessible at all hours to help with science or career questions.
“I credit him for the career that I have right now,” said Kate Koch, 31, a medical and doctoral degree candidate at Harvard Medical School, who worked four years in Sabatini’s lab as an undergrad. “Yes, there is sexism in science. So to have someone like David tell me: ‘You’re good, you’re smart ... I support you’ — I can’t tell you how much that meant.”
The Globe interviewed nearly 50 former Sabatini lab members, representing the full arc of the lab’s history. The overwhelming majority generously praised Sabatini’s ability and devotion to his role as a scientific adviser and career coach, and described his lab not as toxic, but as a rigorous, thriving, thrilling place to do elite science.
I credit him for the career that I have right now. Yes, there is sexism in science. So to have someone like David tell me: ‘You’re good, you’re smart ... I support you’ — I can’t tell you how much that meant.” Kate Koch, former member of David Sabatini’s lab “Sabatini trainees believe we were part of something very unique, very special,” said Naama Kanarek, assistant professor in the pathology department at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who trained with Sabatini and now directs a cancer research lab. “There was always more. That was his mentorship. ‘Aim higher. Do better.’ This was how he operated. I became a better scientist because of his expectations.”
A human constellation forms around someone of Sabatini’s scientific distinction and uncommon ability. By any measure, his lab produced exceptional scientists and high-impact discoveries, largely related to the way cells grow and age, insights into the workings of human genes, and techniques for studying the genes responsible, when they mutate, for some of the worst diseases. A company that grew out of the lab’s work currently has an ovarian cancer drug in clinical trials. Another lab-related company is in trials for a drug to combat depression. Sabatini helped found the companies but is no longer associated with them.
“The projects in the lab were super competitive, high risk, and David recruited super competitive, ambitious people,” said Nada Kalaany, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, who trained with Sabatini and now oversees her own lab working on cancer metabolism. “He is like a magnet to intelligent people. He pushes people to their intellectual limit and wants people to succeed.”
In 2003, early in his career at Whitehead, Sabatini (middle row, second from right) joined members of his then modest-sized lab at a scientific retreat. In 2003, early in his career at Whitehead, Sabatini (middle row, second from right) joined members of his then modest-sized lab at a scientific retreat. Roughly 35 scientists trained by Sabatini have opened their own labs at academic institutions around the United States, such as Harvard, Duke, University of California Berkeley, NYU, Rockefeller, and Stanford, as well as universities in Europe, Israel, and Canada. Another 10 or so former Sabatini mentees are directing top-end medical research in the biotech industry.
Yet the Sabatini way was not for everybody.
The lab was a pressure-cooker, its scientific standards sky-high. And Sabatini could exhibit a swaggering egotism, like the caricature of a top heart surgeon who knows he’s the best. “David was on the short-list for the Nobel Prize, not a Nobel Peace Prize,” said one former lab member. Another, though grateful for Sabatini’s mentorship, nevertheless summed up: “David was smart, he knew his lab was good, and he could be a dick sometimes.”
His feedback on science was often painfully direct. If he thought a mentee’s project was a waste of time, he’d say it was a waste of time. Some appreciated his bluntness; some found it hurtful. His language could be crude and foolish; he sometimes used the word “retard” when dismissive of an idea or a person. He flippantly referred to some Whitehead administrators as “potatoes” and allegedly needled a religiously devout male postdoc as the “Catholic virgin.”
Many members didn’t care if Sabatini or someone else dropped an F-bomb in the lab, but some did. Kathleen Ottina, Sabatini’s research lab manager from about 2005-2017, said she complained repeatedly to Sabatini about hearing profanities in the lab. Other lab members say Sabatini told people not to swear around Ottina. But she said her complaints were never resolved. “All the young males wanted to be David Sabatini, so they reflected his behavior,” she said. “It’s a shame that a very, very talented scientist was fascinated with the words middle school boys discover.”
All the young males wanted to be David Sabatini, so they reflected his behavior. It’s a shame that a very, very talented scientist was fascinated with the words middle school boys discover.” Kathleen Ottina, former research lab manager for David Sabatini Anne Carpenter, a computational biologist who runs a lab at the Broad Institute, was one of the few women in the early days of the lab, where she worked from 2003 to 2006. Carpenter had praised Sabatini on Twitter before his fall, but has since revealed other feelings, posting sharp critiques complaining of “profanity, teasing and mocking of both women and men” by lab members.
“I was the only female postdoc and I quickly learned to navigate the lab’s bro culture,” she posted on Twitter. “I avoided being the target of mean comments, but I regret not standing up for those who were targeted.”
Many former trainees agreed that lab banter could be edgy and freewheeling and that personalities grated sometimes, but most described the atmosphere as supportive. “Were people in the lab shitheads every now and then? Yes,” said one recent alum. “It was like fighting with brother and sister — you still love each other.”
Anne Carpenter, who worked in Sabatini''s lab in the early 2000s, has openly criticized his leadership style on Twitter and said she had to navigate a "bro culture" while working there. She is shown here in 2006 in New York City after being awarded a science fellowship. Anne Carpenter, who worked in Sabatini''s lab in the early 2000s, has openly criticized his leadership style on Twitter and said she had to navigate a "bro culture" while working there. She is shown here in 2006 in New York City after being awarded a science fellowship. Science was Sabatini’s life. Most of his friends worked in labs, and, in his own, he tried to act as both a boss and a peer, some members observed, diving into lab banter like a grad student. As later recounted in the investigative report commissioned by Whitehead, two women complained to Whitehead’s HR department in 2021 that Sabatini had made comments that made them uncomfortable. One of them said that, in 2016, he had asked her which of two postdocs she would prefer to date.
In March 2020, that same report said, Sabatini allegedly told a female lab member that he preferred European women to American women because European women talked openly about sex. “Maybe he wants to be more European haha,’’ the lab member texted a friend.
Sabatini could be snarky. He could argue positions he didn’t necessarily hold just to get a rise out of somebody. “He can push into the boundaries of what makes you comfortable,” said one former colleague, a woman, who acknowledged that despite their warm friendship, Sabatini could sometimes be infuriating. “He just enjoys having difficult conversations.”
In response to the criticism, Sabatini acknowledged that he may have unintentionally upset people with jokes or comments. “Of course, I’m sure I have offended people,” he told the Globe, his eyes shining with tears. “I’m a hundred percent sure I’ve offended people and they have not told me. But I’ve never done anything out of malice. I’ve never not bent over backwards for everyone in my lab.”
Kristin Knouse (far left) and David Sabatini, (far right) at a whiskey tasting in May 2018. Kristin Knouse (far left) and David Sabatini, (far right) at a whiskey tasting in May 2018. (Provided by David Sabatini)
Drawn together by whiskey The creative intensity of the Sabatini lab was a draw. Its weekly lab meeting, where mentees presented their science to the group, drew so many visitors from other labs that Sabatini had to make a rule that his lab members had first dibs on the supply of chairs.
Another popular Sabatini lab event was its occasional whiskey tastings. Lots of labs have beer nights. Sabatini hosted his upscale version every few months or so in his office. He would splurge from his own pocket on pricey bottles from Balvenie, The Macallan, and WhistlePig. Lab members who might find it hard to afford a 25-year-old single malt drank samples in plastic cups and ranked them on the whiteboard on the wall.
After graduating from the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Kristin Knouse aspired to have a research lab of her own. After graduating from the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Kristin Knouse aspired to have a research lab of her own. (Gretchen Ertl/Whitehead Institute) The tastings were open to guests, and by 2016 another whiskey aficionado began making appearances. She was Kristin Knouse, already making a mark with her penetrating intelligence and research gifts. Her work focused on unpacking the mysteries of liver regeneration, with an aim to discovering treatments to repair other ailing organs. Then a 28-year-old graduate of Duke University in the Harvard-MIT MD/PhD program, Knouse projected a deep interest in science, and possessed a salty vocabulary. Sabatini had served on her thesis committee.
One of Sabatini’s close friends, Angelika Amon, a charismatic scientist from MIT, had taken Knouse under her wing. Amon had encouraged Knouse to learn from Sabatini. Sabatini later said that Amon told him that Knouse, while possessing a keen intellect, had a tendency to become over-stressed.
Sabatini welcomed Knouse to the whiskey tastings as a friend of the lab, and soon discovered that she knew more about whiskey than he did. Before long Knouse was lending her expertise in picking bottles for Sabatini’s lab tastings and including Sabatini on group invitations for whiskey sampling events around Boston.
A family of scientists Science is in Sabatini’s genes. His father, David Domingo Sabatini, now in his early 90s, is a renowned biologist who for some four decades chaired the cell biology department at what is now the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. The elder Sabatini came from Argentina with his wife, Zulema, a physician, around 1960, to study in the US. They had two sons, both scientists. Bernardo Sabatini, the younger of the two, is a Harvard neuroscientist.
David Sabatini graduated from Brown University, then went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to work on his medical and doctoral degrees. He joined a research lab run by neuroscientist Solomon Snyder, where Sabatini, at age 26, published the discovery that would help make his career. He was working with rapamycin, a drug produced by bacteria first discovered in soil samples taken from a volcano on Easter Island. Rapamycin was known to affect the immune system, but no one knew how.
David Sabatini, with his father, David, a scientist and former chair of the department of cell biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and his mother, Zulema, a retired physician. David Sabatini, with his father, David, a scientist and former chair of the department of cell biology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and his mother, Zulema, a retired physician. (Provided by David Sabatini) Very roughly speaking, Sabatini dangled rapamycin like a hook into brain tissue from rats, to snare the protein to which the drug binds. Hundreds of rats died in Sabatini’s long quest to gather enough of the protein to identify its building blocks. That protein is now called mTOR, for mechanistic target of rapamycin. The protein is critical to explaining how cells, including human cells, detect nutrients and grow. Disruptions to such essential biological functions contribute to some of the worst diseases, such as cancer.
His role in the mTOR discovery made Sabatini’s name, and in 1997, he earned a fellowship to open his own lab at the Whitehead.
He soon also moved ahead on the personal side. Sabatini began dating Valentina Nardi, a native of Italy who worked in another lab at Whitehead. They married in 2004. She is now a molecular genetic pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. They have a son, born in 2010.
Fast forward to 2018, Sabatini’s professional life was hitting new peaks. His personal life, though, was in flux. His marriage fell apart; he and Nardi separated. They divorced in 2019. Both say the parting was amicable.
“I think it happens sometimes; couples fall apart after they have kids,” Nardi told the Globe. “We grew apart over time. We’re very different. I think he’s great. We remain very friendly.”
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A complex relationship evolves It was not unusual for Sabatini, frequently on the road for scientific conferences, to spend time with his fellow scientists when their paths crossed.
In March 2018, Sabatini and Knouse realized they were going to be in Washington, D.C., at the same time. She was just graduating from her MD/PhD program and was about to begin as a Whitehead Fellow, part of a program in which young scientists are given seed money to start their own labs.
Sabatini and Knouse met for drinks at D.C.’s Jack Rose Dining Saloon, a renowned whiskey bar. They had a lot to talk about: Knouse’s lab at Whitehead was opening in June, a big step for an up-and-coming scientist. The institute had offered her the position in 2017; Sabatini had supported her candidacy with a letter of recommendation.
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini at the Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington D.C., on April 18, 2018, a fateful night in their complex relationship.
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini at the Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington D.C., on April 18, 2018, a fateful night in their complex relationship. (Provided by David Sabatini) They sampled whiskeys and chatted about scotch and biology. After about two hours, Sabatini paid the check. He and Knouse would go their separate ways.
The next month, as it would happen, Sabatini was in Washington again, on April 18, for a conference the next day.
Sabatini said Knouse told him she was planning to be in D.C. at that time to see a friend.
Sabatini and Knouse made plans to meet again at the Jack Rose. Sabatini e-mailed a Berkeley biologist at his conference to come along. When the biologist backed out, Sabatini and Knouse went alone. Each posted photos on Twitter of the bottles they tasted.
By fateful coincidence, both had rooms at the same hotel. Late that night, they shared an Uber back to the hotel in Rockville, Md., about 15 miles away. They had been sipping whiskey together for hours. He was 50 and separated; she was 30 and single.
This much is undisputed: They ended up in Sabatini’s hotel room that night and had sex.
In the morning, Knouse left for her own room, and then texted while on her way to the airport. They had this exchange, documented in the Whitehead investigative report, referring to their Twitter posts from the night before:
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I got more Twitter followers than I had scotches last night. Thanks.
DAVID SABATINI
I aim to please. Soon you will be ahead of me. Safe travels.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Same to you. Decided to treat myself to an Uber. [Name of her driver] is driving me to DCA in a Prius.
DAVID SABATINI
I am so [expletive] tired. Now please make old man joke.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Won’t kick you while you’re down. I revived myself with a run through the burbs.
DAVID SABATINI
Only a young chick could do that.
Note: Text exchanges between individuals in this story are animated. Disable animation.
In the aftermath of that first sexual liaison, the e-mails exchanged between them seemed to continue as they had before. Four days later, on April 22, they began a long e-mail exchange about snagging assorted whiskeys, discussing the merits of various bottles.
“If I am ever sufficiently established and rich we can hire a shared admin to manage and book all domestic and international whiskey endeavors,” Knouse wrote to Sabatini on April 25. “Broadly classified as scientific inquiry.”
Within this long exchange, Sabatini offered encouragement when Knouse admitted pre-lab jitters.
Knouse: “The whole ‘holy [expletive] I’m starting my own lab in six weeks and have no idea what I’m doing or if anything is going to work’ is starting to hit me.”
Sabatini: “Everyone goes through what you’re feeling now. There is a bit of an imposter syndrome that lasts until the lab feels messy and used and you have the first success, even if a small one.”
They continued to see each other for occasional sex and kept their meetings secret. They agreed that they were not an exclusive couple, as they later told investigators, and projected to others around them an upbeat supportive friendship.
Their texts to one another were sometimes full of urgent sexual energy, about where they might find the privacy and time, however short, to meet.
Sabatini: In my office for a bit
Knouse: In tissue culture will update in a bit.
Knouse: On site clinic too precarious right now. Busier afternoon than expected but could probably duck out downtown at some point.
Sabatini: Hmm. Not sure my hours would permit that. Is third floor busy.
Knouse: Returning from mouse room will investigate.
Their exchanges often, too, featured an archly nerdy scientific patois.
“Someone is rocking morning dihydro-T spike,” Knouse wrote to Sabatini after he suggested they meet, referring to testosterone.
In pursuing their sexual relationship, they knowingly crossed a line that could pose complications, including the risk of workplace policy violations. They kept their liaison secret. Over roughly the next year and a half, they slept together about 10 to 15 times, according to accounts each later gave to investigators.
Sabatini says he came to think of Knouse as one of his best friends.
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini (right) hanging out with a friend in 2019. Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini (right) hanging out with a friend in 2019. (Provided by David Sabatini) They met for dinners and drinks with Sabatini’s professional colleagues. Knouse joined video game sessions, ice cream excursions, and swims at the MIT pool with Sabatini and his son, and went to the movies with Sabatini, his son, and Sabatini’s ex-wife. Knouse joined family movie day with Sabatini and his brother, Bernardo, and Bernardo’s kids.
“David had a sardonic sense of humor and Kristin definitely did too,” said one of Sabatini’s friends, who joined an ice cream tour of Cambridge with Sabatini, Knouse, and Sabatini’s son. “It was just fun and very casual and friendly banter about this or that. If you had asked me about the nature of their relationship, I’d have said they were very close friends.”
Lena Pernas, who currently runs her own lab in Germany, had a three-month position as a visiting scientist in the Whitehead lab of David Sabatini at the end of 2018. Lena Pernas, who currently runs her own lab in Germany, had a three-month position as a visiting scientist in the Whitehead lab of David Sabatini at the end of 2018. (Pernas Lab) Those in and around the lab knew Sabatini and Nardi had separated, and in the gossipy world of Whitehead, there was much speculation about his romantic life. In late 2018, a newcomer to the lab drew attention. She was Lena Pernas, then a 31-year-old American scientist working at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany. She came to Whitehead for a three-month position. Pernas had known Sabatini for years through scientific conferences.
Some around Whitehead couldn’t help but wonder if Sabatini was romantically involved with this new arrival, but Whitehead investigators later found no evidence their relationship became romantic at that time.
Knouse also took note of the arrival of Pernas — a woman roughly her age, with similar high educational achievement and scientific ambition.
As 2018 came to a close, Knouse focused on establishing her lab. She and Sabatini kept up their professional, friendly, complex, and occasionally sexual relationship. Knouse was a source of strength and support when Sabatini had a health scare. He said he tried to be supportive when she had some health issues.
A time of new rules Both of them entered this secret relationship at a time when the #MeToo movement had focused greater attention on the hazards of professional relationships that veer into sex. HR departments strained to come up with rules to accommodate the inevitable attraction between co-workers, while at the same time protecting employees from exploitation.
Sabatini and Knouse also continued their liaisons even though both were aware through Whitehead’s grapevine that the institute had had at least one recent controversial workplace relationship that required HR intervention. Sabatini had also, a month before his first sexual encounter with Knouse, completed MIT’s online anti-sexual harassment training required of all faculty, records show.
Science, like many other professions, abounds with couples who met at work.
In fact, leaders of two institutions that would later rule on Sabatini’s fate have been in long-term relationships with people they worked with, though in each case they said they notified higher-ups about it and hewed to applicable personnel guidelines.
The #Metoo movement is credited with bringing accountability on sexual harassment in the workplace, elevating once marginal voices, and inspiring millions of people, including these demonstrators in Los Angeles on Jan. 20, 2018. The #Metoo movement is credited with bringing accountability on sexual harassment in the workplace, elevating once marginal voices, and inspiring millions of people, including these demonstrators in Los Angeles on Jan. 20, 2018. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) In the 1990s, Erin O’Shea, president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, became romantically involved with a graduate student who worked in her lab in California; the couple have now been married 21 years. And Whitehead director Ruth Lehmann has been in a relationship for many years with a former colleague, a NYU neurobiologist who also worked at the Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine at NYU while Lehmann was Skirball’s director from 2006 to 2020.
In August 2018, Whitehead amended its rules to take an unusually hard stand against consensual relationships. It banned faculty members, senior managers, and principal investigators from having a sexual relationship with anyone employed at Whitehead, even professional peers of the same high rank. It was a policy considered strict in HR circles, and remarkably scant on details. The policy outlined no procedures for disclosure and mitigation if two employees fall in love, or just get carried away and end up in bed. It said simply that, under the threat of possible termination, it is the responsibility of the people covered by the ban to “control their own actions.”
The policy change came five months after Sabatini’s and Knouse’s liaisons began. They continued the secret relationship, now unambiguously forbidden. They both held similar titles as principal investigators, so they both violated the policy. But Sabatini, who had far more stature, would have had more reason to worry about consequences. Whitehead also barred managers from having a relationship with a “close personal relation” over whom they have power.
Knouse did not work for Sabatini. But he could potentially have had a career-influencing role, as the far-more established scientist. He was one of her two mentors in her fellowship program, records show, and he had written her letters of recommendation. He later headed the fellows program she was a part of, though that post was focused on attracting new talent not managing fellows.
Kristin Knouse spoke at an event at Whitehead honoring the "new generation" of scientists working there in 2019. Kristin Knouse spoke at an event at Whitehead honoring the "new generation" of scientists working there in 2019. (Whitehead Institute video still) His seasoned guidance meant even more to her in the months to come. In 2019, Knouse was coping with the crushing fact that Amon, her beloved mentor, was battling an advanced case of ovarian cancer. Knouse at the time suffered through dark moods and confided in Sabatini occasionally.
“The existential crisis continues,” she wrote to him in January 2019. “What is the point if I’m never satisfied and everything is meaningless and all of my female scientist role models are either dead/dying/falling off the wagon so clearly I’m next.”
He responded, “I’m sorry Kk. Text me when up. There is no point. Just to enjoy our time here. And indeed I think we do enjoy it.”
Sabatini checked on her one night the next month:
DAVID SABATINI
Are you ok KK? Just like you have been here for me i will be for you. I’m off to bed as rough day tomorrow. A kiss
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Cried in mouse room for an hour.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Entertained idea of taking trip somewhere but all I picture is me in a cool new location in same terrible mood.
DAVID SABATINI
When I am back we will plan a cool place for you.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I have no interest.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Thanks for talking though. Hopefully tomorrow will be better as I cannot focus on anything right now. I feel so [expletive] up.
Sabatini says that he noticed something about Knouse that summer of 2019: She began to imply that she could be interested in something more with him than friendship with occasional casual sex, he told the Globe.
On July 9, 2019, Knouse wrote to him: “I really value and enjoy our friendship and the personal/physical connection we’ve had and at times find myself wanting to see where it goes while also fully understanding you are not in a place for that now, there are complicating circumstances of age and workplace, and having no idea how you feel.”
It was a mistake on his part, Sabatini told the Globe, that he did not fully acknowledge and respond then to what he perceived as her shifting feelings for him.
But Knouse would later tell investigators that, from the start of her secret sexual liaisons with Sabatini, she was entwined in a swirl of anxiety about the relationship and the imbalance of power, as well as confusion about what she most wanted from Sabatini — mentoring and networking, friendship, or maybe something more. She would later say that their first sexual encounter felt coercive, and others did too, but he dismissed her misgivings when she voiced them.
She privately complained to close colleagues and friends about a sense of unfairness in her dealings with Sabatini. “After crying in my office for an hour, I decided i’m not taking this shit anymore. He can’t have me as a friend when he wants a friend but then when i voice my upset call in the hierarchy and treat me like shit,” she wrote a friend in July 2019.
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Email [email protected] SUBMIT She also complained that he did not realize his demeanor could come off as angry even when he said he wasn’t and that he excessively unloaded personal issues onto her.
“He’s also seriously considering a therapist,” Knouse wrote.
“Wow you made some progress,” the friend responded. “You keep chipping away at him, he’ll accept your referral.”
“I think he will,” Knouse replied.” He always comes around to rationality.”
Knouse’s sense of their complex relationship was also evolving — and turning more negative — at a time when a scandalous rumor about Sabatini was also in the air.
Sabatini had been seen by some researchers talking on a bench by the Charles River with a female undergraduate who had asked for his advice on grad schools. Speculation soon percolated within the gossipy hubs of Whitehead about the nature of their relationship. The rumors were unfounded, as investigators later concluded. But the gossip fed into Knouse’s doubts about Sabatini, which were reflected in communications she shared with a friend at the time.
By late 2019, Knouse was distressed about her relationship with Sabatini, text messages from the time suggest. She respected him professionally, but was becoming disillusioned with him personally, and harbored growing feelings of being treated like a mistress, sexually exploited and called upon only when he needed emotional support about something, Knouse later told investigators.
Kristin Knouse (right) and the late Angelika Amon, who was an MIT professor and her mentor, at a celebration in the Amon lab after Knouse defended her PhD thesis on Sept. 9, 2016. Kristin Knouse (right) and the late Angelika Amon, who was an MIT professor and her mentor, at a celebration in the Amon lab after Knouse defended her PhD thesis on Sept. 9, 2016. In November 2019, she sent texts to Amon sharing some of her distress.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I’m getting to the point where I’d be almost willing to go public with my story. It’s done so much damage to me and we''re it not for an amazing support system of friends, you, therapists, etc I’m not sure I’d still be here. Would hate to see anyone else go through it.
ANGELIKA AMON
Let us talk this through carefully. I have a dinner at 6:30 tonight but should be done by 8:30 - 9pm. Unfortunately I do not have time for the rest of the week.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I’m happy to talk whenever is convenient for you. I also do not want to add an additional burden on top of all you’re going through so I can also pursue the ombuds office, etc for advice. When it all began I tried to stop it and he said to relax, it was no big deal, and at that point it seemed most career-preserving to just go with it. I’m sorry about this shitshow and I cannot thank you enough for your understanding and support.
During a subsequent meal at the Catalyst restaurant in Cambridge with Amon and one of Knouse’s friends, Knouse briefly discussed her complicated sexual encounters with Sabatini. She was conflicted about what to do - whether to cut it off or continue so as not to provoke him. Amon had raised the point that reporting sexual misconduct was unlikely to go well for her.
“There was a lot of internal agonizing,’’ recalled the friend.
Sabatini told the Globe that Knouse occasionally implied through the end of 2019 that she wanted a deeper connection with him.
Around Jan. 1, 2020, Sabatini told a friend as well as his brother, Bernardo, that Knouse had come to his office at the end of December to say she wanted more from him and from their relationship — that they should become a real couple.
David Sabatini (right) and his brother, Bernardo, a neuroscience professor at Harvard who has been a vocal supporter of David since his career imploded, including on social media. David Sabatini (right) and his brother, Bernardo, a neuroscience professor at Harvard who has been a vocal supporter of David since his career imploded, including on social media. (Bob O''Connor) “What???” the friend replied by text.
“Yup she said she does not need a ring though,” Sabatini wrote. He later said he told Knouse that he did not know what he really wanted.
Bernardo Sabatini had spent time with his brother and Knouse. He had never seen them kiss or hold hands, but he believed there was an affinity between them.
Sabatini told the Globe that he never told his brother or anyone else that he and Knouse had a sexual relationship.
Bernardo asked his brother if he wanted to bring Knouse to his New Year’s party.
No, he didn’t.
Sabatini was interested in someone else.
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As career soars, a love interest abroad In his work life, Sabatini was as busy as ever. His stature was only rising on the international scene. In 2018 and 2019, he was the senior author on 10 scientific papers and had his name on eight others. As always, he hustled among speaking engagements.
He was also a valued member of Whitehead. In 2019, he was part of the institute’s search for a new director, which ultimately selected Lehmann, a highly respected German-born scientist who had worked at Whitehead in the 1980s and 1990s, before directing the Skirball Institute in New York. She would be the second woman to lead the 40-year-old Whitehead.
As 2019 wound down, concerning news out of China foretold the coming pandemic. Sabatini also had other things on his mind. He began wondering about the possibility of a new romantic relationship.
In the year since Pernas had left his lab for Germany, Sabatini had stayed in touch with her. He thought they had personal chemistry.
In early 2020, Sabatini was hoping to see Pernas on a trip to Cologne for a conference. Was it possible they could begin a romance? He intended to find out.
Sabatini was frank with Knouse, brutally so, about his interest in another woman. They discussed it in a raw text exchange over several days in mid-January, while Sabatini traveled to Germany.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I think more of what I was trying to get at yesterday and what keeps biting at me is that when I come down from investing a lot of concern, thought, and effort into trying to help you I’m left wondering whether you would put in that same amount for me and not certain there would be a point when you care enough about a relationship to fight for it and give it the amount of effort I would want and deserve to be happy. Surely connection matters but so too does effort. No need to discuss now but worth thinking about over time.
DAVID SABATINI
Kk I don’t have the energy or bandwidth to get into this right now.
She wrote the next day to thank him for some restaurant recommendations. He didn’t respond. Hours later, she wrote again to say she had been re-evaluating their secret relationship and did not like what she saw.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I get anxious when I don’t hear back from you and then I see you post stuff on Twitter and it provides an admittedly small and silly but still another bit of evidence to this growing feeling that you don’t care about me in the way that I care about you. I think I’ve been harboring but suppressing this sense of inequality and pain for a long time with adverse consequences for my focus, productivity, and happiness. I know you don’t intend for this and it may be entirely situational. I also know you don’t want to deal with this right now and I don’t want to keep bothering you but I also can’t afford to or deserve to keep feeling like this. My only thought is for me to pull away and cut contact, despite how much I want to be there for you.
DAVID SABATINI
I am sorry but you are being crazy. Between a day of meetings and jet lag I found a minute to retweet [a lab member’s] review. Please stop.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
It hurt to be called crazy for trying to care and express how I feel. I care about you a lot and always want to do whatever I can to help. But clearly in practice it was harder than I anticipated to be invested in that while also respecting your need for space and exploration and I’m sorry to both of us for all of the anxiety that came forward. Having time to reflect and refocus over the past few days definitely helped and I hope that continues to be true for both of us in the coming weeks with travel. I hope European time has been good for you.
DAVID SABATINI
I am sorry but I just want some peace. I told you where I am mentally and your text did not help. You need to chill out and let fate take its course.
DAVID SABATINI
Things with Lena have been interesting and fun. Yes we have kissed and discussed more but nothing has happened. I need to spend more time with her to understand what we mean to each other but unclear how that will happen unless I spend more time here.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I appreciate you being honest. I’ll be honest and say it definitely hurts to validate some of my anxieties in light of our closeness and discussions over the past few weeks. It seems like this will be something that won’t be resolved with just another day there?
Sabatini said he wasn’t sure if he could resolve his feelings during that trip and might schedule another. Later, Knouse asked, “Do you feel like you would have the same intellectual/ambition connection with her like we have? It seems like that would be one difference and it’s a question of what you want in your partner.”
“I don’t know. You are very different,” he replied.
She informed him she wanted to know “where things stand” upon the end of his trip.
After more back and forth, she wrote again, saying that she had spoken about Sabatini with Amon, her mentor, and that Amon was “worried you’re just as insecure and intimidated by me as all the other guys I’ve dated.”
“I’m not sure what made her say that,” Knouse wrote, “but I think it’s worth thinking about whether you want someone who matches your passion, intellect and ambition and thereby pushes, challenges, and shares in that with you. I certainly want that because it helps me become the best and fullest version of myself.”
Sabatini wrote back, “Everyone is entitled to their hypotheses. I would rather table these discussions until a later date. Thank you.”
“Of course,” she replied, and asked him to respect her feelings.
“I have been 100% honest with you about my current state of mind,” he responded. “Please give me some space as a friend.”
Sabatini wrote to Knouse on Jan. 19, on his way home to the United States. He and Pernas had decided to try to have a relationship, despite the distance.
“I hope you can understand that where I am mentally I have to explore this,” he wrote. “I also hope that you can see to being my friend first and foremost just as I am for you.”
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I understand and wish you the best in figuring this out. But I think it’s best we remove ourselves from each other’s lives for the foreseeable future.
DAVID SABATINI
Of course I understand Kristin. I will always wish the best for you.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
The only certainty in your life, now and forever, is that you love your son and your lab more than anything else. Be careful not to abandon them despite your current mental state. Take care.
Their secret, forbidden relationship was over.
The fallout had yet to begin.
Read part two: A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science
To reach the Spotlight Team staff members who worked on this piece, please write to [email protected] or call 617-929-7483 or individually at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
A broken bond, a shaken citadel of science
Kristin Sabatini photo illustration Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini, both biologists, had an intimate relationship that bridged boundaries — she is young in her career, he is globally renowned — and broke the rules at Cambridge’s Whitehead Institute. After Knouse alleged harassment and other complaints emerged, an investigation rocked Whitehead, forced out Sabatini and damaged all involved. Did it have to end this way? This series was reported by Meghan E. Irons, Mark Arsenault, and Spotlight editor Patricia Wen. This story was written by Irons.
Published Jan. 28, 2023
The two women from Whitehead Institute sat at a quiet table outside Tatte Bakery & Cafe in Kendall Square on Oct. 19, 2020, trying hard to extend their small talk before the conversation turned serious.
Ruth Lehmann, who had started as Whitehead’s director only a few months earlier, had brought along her Australian shepherd, who lazed on the sidewalk. Sitting with her was Kristin Knouse, one of the institute’s young, talented researchers who, during this conversation, could barely suppress her nerves. Her future was at stake — and maybe that of others.
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Read part one Inside the fall of a star MIT scientist Lehmann had set up this meeting to resolve a mystery: Why was Knouse, then 32, leaving Whitehead prematurely, midway through her prestigious five-year fellowship? It was a stunning step; it made no sense.
Lehmann, an award-winning germ cell biologist, had built a career in a male-dominated field and championed the success of young scientists like Knouse. On her first day as Whitehead director that July, she had promised to foster “a culture of excellence” and about a week later, commissioned a firm to conduct a diversity, equity, and inclusion survey of all staff. She couldn’t know it at the time, but the survey would, in tandem with other concerns voiced by staff, have seismic consequences.
Ruth Lehmann outside the Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge in early July 2020, just days after taking over as its new director. Ruth Lehmann outside the Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge in early July 2020, just days after taking over as its new director. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff) She was aiming to improve the work environment of the place, and facing sobering realities.
The National Institutes of Health, a major government source of grants for Whitehead, had threatened fiscal penalties for institutions that didn’t transparently, and vigorously, address issues of sexual harassment and misconduct. This came after a 2018 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found pervasive discrimination against women in science. Since the report, institutions nationwide had begun removing the names of over 100 scientists accused of sexual harassment and other misconduct from grants and awards funded by NIH.
“I hope that we can undertake honest, productive, and difficult conversations together,’’ said Lehmann, then 65, in an email to all employees on her first day as the head of Whitehead.
Lehmann knew that cultural change would come hard, because it meant dealing with issues endemic to the large, modern science labs that have turbo-charged this region’s economy. For decades, some researchers have complained that the labs often become imperious environments driven by the personality and priorities of the lab leader — the so-called principal investigator or P.I. Young scientists can become dependent on these research stars for career advancement and often feel they have little recourse if they have complaints.
That day at Tatte, Knouse couldn’t bring herself to unload her own complaint, couldn’t tell Lehmann that her anguish was all about one of those scientific stars — David Sabatini — and how, over time, her view of their complicated relationship had changed. She had come to see him as the source of her despair.
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As far as the outside world could see, she and Sabatini were colleagues and friends, but the truth was that, off and on for more than a year, they had had about a dozen secret sexual liaisons — secret because, beyond wanting to avoid eyebrow-raising gossip, they knew that such relationships between scientists in their positions were strictly forbidden at the Whitehead. The two had bonded at first over their shared love of science — he had been her teacher and mentor — and good whiskey. And then, in an arrangement that she later told confidantes caused her increasing unease, they had casual and clandestine sex.
All along, they had agreed their relationship wasn’t exclusive, that they could see others. And he had, taking up with an American scientist based in Germany who had briefly worked in his lab. When he told Knouse about it in early 2020, she spoke of hurt and ended the relationship.
Her emotions evolved to something else. It was not about jealousy or disappointed hopes, according to friends who spoke to her then. Over time, she had become hardened in her view that Sabatini had exploited her, and that, she believed, he had a pattern of pursuing other young female scientists who craved his professional blessing.
For this reason, she sought to leave Whitehead. She also wanted to expose the powerful scientist she believed might hurt other vulnerable women.
Sabatini has said to the Globe that he never exploited his power in any way with Knouse, or any other woman.
In the meeting with Lehmann that day, Knouse found it hard to contemplate, much less talk about something so painful, so confusing, and so long a secret. She was frightened, as she told trusted colleagues, of the likely backlash.
Kristin Knouse, shown here in 2021, studies how tissues sense and respond to damage to help develop novel treatments for a range of human diseases. Kristin Knouse, shown here in 2021, studies how tissues sense and respond to damage to help develop novel treatments for a range of human diseases. (Video by MIT Department of Biology) And so when Lehmann asked why she was leaving, the younger scientist said only that she had experienced “harassment” that had deeply affected her mental health. She didn’t say what kind of harassment, or by whom.
Knouse’s allegation, though initially vague, landed like a ticking time bomb in Lehmann’s lap. After decades immersed in laboratory life, she knew that sexual harassment against women in science was all too common and that any probe would inevitably convulse the workplace, unleashing forces that could blow up into lawsuits, disruption, and truth-twisting social media storms. Lehmann had only met Knouse once before, briefly, at a work retreat.
By the next month, November, Lehmann appeared to know much more. She seemed to have some idea that Knouse intended to make a complaint about Sabatini, according to e-mails between Knouse and Lehmann reviewed by the Globe. Soon, more of Knouse’s account, full of nuance and complications and assertions that Sabatini furiously disputes, would emerge.
A sisterhood There were good reasons why it seemed unthinkable for Knouse to leave Whitehead, and to name Sabatini as the root of her growing pain.
The institute is one of the world’s leading centers for biomedical research, a powerful draw for the best minds in the field, the capstone for a career. Very few young, aspiring scientific superstars — and Knouse was surely one — would walk away from such an opportunity.
For Knouse, even though her lab was still small, getting to a place like Whitehead and working with internationally renowned researchers had been the fulfillment of a long-held dream, though she wasn’t one of those precocious souls who had known since childhood that science was the center of their world. Growing up in Allentown, Pa., she told the Globe, she didn’t have many strong female professional role models; her mother was largely a stay-at-home mom raising her and her two younger siblings. She had imagined she might be a medical doctor, like her father.
But a summer high school science enrichment program lit the spark, and her undergraduate studies at Duke and graduate work at the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program only confirmed her love of biological research — and her uncommon gift for the work. She became fascinated by the liver’s capacity to regenerate after injury, and wondered whether unpacking that mystery could help in the treatment of other organs.
“There was a fire inside me for this,’’ Knouse told the Globe, in her first of two interviews since her role in the Sabatini controversy became public. (Knouse declined several previous requests for interviews, but ultimately consented on the condition that her lawyers be present and that she would not publicly discuss her relationship with Sabatini due to his pending defamation case against her.)
Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini shown together in a selfie, taken in February 2018, two months before their friendship would include a sexual dimension. Kristin Knouse and David Sabatini shown together in a selfie, taken in February 2018, two months before their friendship would include a sexual dimension. (Provided by David Sabatini) Taking on Sabatini was hard for her. Beyond the fact of their sexual entanglement, he had been at times a special mentor to her, and having an influential patron is critical to success in the rarefied upper echelons of science. She also knew he would insist — and he did — that their sexual relationship was entirely consensual, and that his past record shows deep respect and support for female scientists. She worried about whether she could prosper at Whitehead or anywhere, if she angered Sabatini and he turned on her.
“If I launch an investigation and he DOESN’T get fired, my life will be hell,” she said to a lab member in a text obtained by the Globe.
Knouse’s resentment of Sabatini intensified when she summoned the nerve, sometime in 2019, to open up about her feelings to a handful of other women at Whitehead. They were part of an informal sisterhood that had evolved within this 40-year-old biomedical research institute, and they often traded exasperated text messages at all hours. They also confided in one another outside the lab, while jogging or kayaking or sipping cocktails.
These women were mostly young, from diverse backgrounds, and in the early stages of their careers. Their presence at Whitehead highlighted some recent successes in diversity and inclusion efforts at the institute. Women now represent about half of the total employee pool at Whitehead, though they make up only a quarter of its principal investigators and fellows.
When some of the women got together socially, all kinds of subjects were on the table, including their uncomfortable experiences involving Sabatini and the offensive edge of some of the discourse in his lab, according to interviews and texts reviewed by the Globe. There was talk of advice they had received from other researchers to “play hard to get” with him to get his support and about his eye for attractive women in the lab.
POSTDOC 1
The only way to get david to like you as a woman is if you sexually appeal to him.
POSTDOC 2
🤮🤮🤮🤮
POSTDOC 1
(I mean act in a way that suggests to him you find him in some way attractive or whatever)
POSTDOC 2
no way hahaha
POSTDOC 2
I will keep beating him
POSTDOC 1
Actually, there is another way if you are extremely smart and impress him with that, but then he will still make fun of you in other ways
POSTDOC 2
hahaha yeah
POSTDOC 2
and never agree with you
POSTDOC 1
And I’m clearly not smart enough for that 😆
Note: Text exchanges between individuals in this story are animated. Disable animation.
In the fall of 2020, Knouse and other women took part in Whitehead’s zoom viewing of a newly released documentary, “Picture a Scientist.” It was about the decades-long struggle by women in science for equity and respect, and featured retired MIT molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins, as well as a former BU graduate student, Jane Willenbring, whose sexual harassment allegations against geologist David Marchant led to his firing in 2019.
After the viewing, Knouse thought to herself, as she recalled to the Globe, “It is wrong for me to stay quiet.”
She mulled her next steps methodically and anticipated how she would likely be portrayed.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I mean he legally cannot retaliate but basically he could go on twitter and call me a scorned ex lover then that’s out there it can’t be unsaid.
FORMER LAB MEMBER
And he can shit talk you to his friends, and if all they’re hearing is his side.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Yup.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
He can say that i pursued him heavily, i went to his whiskey tastings, i flirted with him, etc.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
It’s all he said she said.
FORMER LAB MEMBER
Yep.
Knouse’s texts that were shared with friends and investigators — and reviewed by the Globe — appear to document a gradual and wrenching evolution of her emotional state. Her feelings of exploitation had run alongside a wish for a more meaningful relationship with Sabatini, but then, at some point, Knouse became openly hostile, and wanted Sabatini to be held accountable.
The texts are not as revealing about when her change of mind began or exactly what triggered it. Sabatini and Knouse offer sharply different accounts on this score — she saying her sense of exploitation, there from the start, only escalated over time; he saying the shift came only after she learned of his new relationship. But the texts do suggest how deeply wounded and angry Knouse had become.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
The past few nights I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and journaling and coming to terms with how [expletive] toxic and damaging my entire situation with him was. I feel like I was totally brainwashed.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I kept trying to escape and he would suck me back in. I’m resolved to never let it happen again.
FORMER LAB MEMBER
There’s a reason why [a colleague’s] husband kept asking if we were in a cult.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
Since I formally cut ties I honestly feel like a kid who got rescued from an old creeper’s basement.
The texts show that Knouse, in the months before her meeting at Tatte with Lehmann, had brainstormed with friends about how she could confront Sabatini and see him penalized.
This was all happening at a time when Knouse was losing the support and counsel of one of the strongest female scientists she knew — Angelika Amon, an MIT professor who had been her mentor since graduate school. Amon was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in 2018 and died on Oct. 29, 2020.
Kristin Knouse with her mentor, MIT cell biologist Angelika Amon, at a celebration after Knouse defended her PhD thesis in the fall of 2016, four years before Amon died of ovarian cancer. Kristin Knouse with her mentor, MIT cell biologist Angelika Amon, at a celebration after Knouse defended her PhD thesis in the fall of 2016, four years before Amon died of ovarian cancer. “She believed in me before I believed in myself,” Knouse told the Globe.
Amon’s widower, Johannes Weis, said in an interview that when Knouse confided in Amon about her sexual liaisons with Sabatini, his wife was angry and upset with Sabatini, whom she had long viewed as a trusted MIT colleague.
“It was abundantly clear to me that Angelika thought that this was inappropriate,’’ Weis said, “and it was David’s job not to let it happen.”
As she battled cancer, Amon tried to protect Knouse, one of her top graduate students, recommending that she not file a complaint in the Whitehead system while she still worked there.
“She was very worried about Kristin,’’ Weis said. “She offered guidance. But ultimately she knew it would have to be Kristin’s decision.”
Knouse, as she planned next steps, had sought advice from MIT’s Ombuds office, a source of confidential counsel for MIT faculty, students, and staff, at least one Title IX lawyer, and another senior MIT professor about how she might proceed against Sabatini, according to texts and interviews.
The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is affiliated with Whitehead Institute. All of Whitehead''s principal investigators have faculty positions at MIT. The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is affiliated with Whitehead Institute. All of Whitehead''s principal investigators have faculty positions at MIT. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) FORMER LAB MEMBER
Did they offer anything helpful
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I mean basically that knowledge that it becomes a question of who’s more credible.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
He could say that he ASSURED me that i could push of his advances and that he wasn’t my direct supervisor etc etc
KRISTIN KNOUSE
and then he just gets a small slap on the wrist
FORMER LAB MEMBER
That is why sexual harassment will keep happening. The consequences aren’t severe enough to discourage it from happening. And that all ties into the perception that this isn’t as big of a problem.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
I know.
KRISTIN KNOUSE
im so demoralized right now.
Knouse had received advice that, to make a strong case against Sabatini, it would help to show a pattern of inappropriate behavior. Knouse began encouraging researchers she knew who had privately complained about Sabatini to speak to Whitehead authorities; some agreed and some declined.
The senior MIT professor, who knew the risks faced by women who take on powerful scientists, also later gave Knouse the name of a legal expert who could help in any protracted legal fight: former federal judge Nancy Gertner.
As Knouse texted to a friend: “hopefully in a few years time i can look back and be like damn i fixed a huge systemic problem.’’
On Dec. 10, 2020, Whitehead’s diversity, equity, and inclusion survey, the culture-challenging initiative launched by Lehmann, dropped in Knouse’s e-mail box, as it did for more than 500 other employees at Whitehead. It offered a confidential way for Knouse and others to voice their concerns.
It would be the beginning of Sabatini’s undoing.
A career on the rise, then trouble David Sabatini was riding high at the start of 2020.
Awards and money were pouring in. He received Columbia University’s Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, often considered a precursor to the Nobel Prize because many recipients have gone on to win one. He also shared the Sjöberg Prize for significant contributions to cancer research.
Sabatini’s achievements and growing renown also made him a magnet for researchers, many of whom were attracted by his high-intensity lab. They published scientific papers at a prolific pace, more than 200 since he launched his lab in 1997.
The Sjöberg Prize 2020 went to David Sabatini (right) as well as Michael N. Hall from the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. They jointly received the award ”for their discovery of mTOR and its role in the control of cell metabolism and growth.” The Sjöberg Prize 2020 went to David Sabatini (right) as well as Michael N. Hall from the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. They jointly received the award ”for their discovery of mTOR and its role in the control of cell metabolism and growth.” (Sjöberg Prize) “There was a great esprit de corps in the lab,” said one member who was there in the years leading up to Sabatini’s fall. “It was great to be around that energy.”
Sabatini’s personal life was also taking off as well — and he married for the second time.
He had fallen in love with Lena Pernas, the researcher based in Germany who had briefly worked in his lab. Sabatini told some in his lab that the two had a “crazy connection.” He made plans to visit her overseas.
In the last days of 2020, Pernas traveled to Cambridge. On Dec. 29, she and Sabatini appeared in the Cambridge city clerk’s office and married.
Pernas did not respond to a Globe request for comment.
But amid these moments of happiness, ominous clouds were building around Sabatini’s lab. By early 2021, as the diversity, equity, and inclusion survey and a pair of other complaints came into HR around the same time, Lehmann and other administrators began to suspect one of Whitehead’s top labs may have a toxic underside.
It was abundantly clear to me that Angelika thought that this was inappropriate, and it was David’s job not to let it happen.” Johannes Weis, Angelika Amon''s widower The first signs of trouble became clear when Jones Diversity, the firm hired by Whitehead to direct the survey, began to tally the input of 225 staffers who anonymously completed it — representing roughly 40 percent of the workforce. While most addressed Whitehead’s work culture generally, three anonymous respondents singled out Sabatini.
Among them was a “white male graduate student” who said that Sabatini tolerated a particular visiting scientist who routinely made sexist and racist remarks. Another of the complainants was Knouse, the Globe has confirmed, and the third was a female trainee who did not work in Sabatini’s lab.
Separate from the survey, two female researchers who trained with Sabatini spoke to the human resource department in January 2021, according to the Whitehead investigative report, which kept their names anonymous. One of the women, a former postdoc, told Whitehead officials that she was not treated as a scientist, but as a “female scientist.” She felt she was seen as a “potential person to date” in Sabatini’s lab. She said that Sabatini, at a work retreat, asked her to “pick” between two male postdocs and was once asked by him whether she was romantically interested in his brother, Bernardo, a Harvard neuroscience professor.
The other was a former MIT graduate student who reported a “culture of competition” in the lab, but for the wrong reasons, the investigative report said. She told human resource officials that Sabatini showed more personal attention to “attractive” lab members and that female trainees deliberately “flirt a little” with Sabatini because they believe it will boost their careers.
Several other women in the Sabatini lab at the time, however, told the Globe that Sabatini never fostered a sexualized environment. “It’s unequivocally not true,” said one woman from the lab.
But the complaints of the two scientists to Whitehead human resources — both well-respected and more senior than Knouse — carried credibility with administrators and had legal impact. Lehmann, now faced with credible sexual harassment complaints against a named individual and the DEI survey results, was legally compelled to investigate.
Meanwhile, Jones Diversity reported its survey’s findings to Whitehead leadership. It scheduled a Zoom presentation for principal investigators and fellows to explain the results on March 25, 2021.
An investigation begins Both Sabatini and Knouse were among those on the Zoom screen, looking at slides displaying statistics and quotes.
The overall DEI results found that the “culture within the Whitehead community is not inclusive for all. Women and people of color feel significantly less included than white males.”
The survey, focus groups, and interviews also documented that “the laboratory environment” was a particular area of concern. More than 30 percent said they heard “offensive language,” about topics such as race, LGBTQ status, and gender, among others. The primary source of offensive language was the institute’s most powerful players, its principal investigators, the survey said.
Whitehead DEI survey results 31%
Percentage of survey respondents who said, in the past three years, they have heard someone at work make offensive comments involving issues such as race, age,weight, LGBTQ status and gender.
28%
Percentage of people of color who felt they “need to hide a part of their identity” to assimilate at Whitehead, about twice that of white respondents.
54%
Percentage of administrative and support staff who said they felt comfortable reporting offensive comments to leadership, but only 11 percent of scientific researchers felt the same, suggesting a more tenuous connection to the institution.
Source: Whitehead Institute and Jones Diversity, which conducted the DEI survey.
Sabatini attended the Zoom from Germany, where his new wife lived. He told the Globe he had no idea any of the survey complaints were focused on him.
Later that day, Knouse reiterated her resolve to take action against Sabatini after attending that meeting.
She texted to her friend, “i am out for blood at this point,” then later added, “i’m so ready to get this over with.”
Sabatini was asked to attend another Zoom meeting the next morning, with Whitehead board members Susan Hockfield, a former MIT president, and Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and a 1993 Nobel Prize winner.
Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and Nobel Prize winner, at a cancer research event in 2018.
Phillip Sharp, an MIT biology professor and Nobel Prize winner, at a cancer research event in 2018. (Daniel Boczarski) They informed him that several respondents in the survey had singled out his lab. They said Whitehead would launch an investigation into him and his lab.
Sabatini replied that he always offered help to people who felt aggrieved and denied ever threatening to retaliate against them, according to Whitehead notes from the meeting. He said he had a strong record of supporting women.
He was shocked by what he heard, Sabatini told the Globe. He was hearing about some of the complaints for the first time and had never imagined that some of the banter in the lab would lead to a large-scale investigation.
Hockfield and Sharp did not respond to requests for comment.
Susan Hockfield, a neuroscience professor at MIT, was the first woman to become president of MIT. She served from 2004 to 2012. Susan Hockfield, a neuroscience professor at MIT, was the first woman to become president of MIT. She served from 2004 to 2012. (David Sella) Meanwhile, Lehmann, early in her tenure at Whitehead, was facing a nightmarish personnel crisis around one of the institute’s most prominent scientists who brought in massive research dollars.
She wrote to Sabatini outlining the concerns raised by “the survey and other sources.” She said outside investigators would seek to interview members of his lab or others who may have helpful information.
And, in what would prove to be a test of whether she could trust him, she explicitly ordered him not to try to interfere with the investigation in any way.
“We strongly advise you to refrain from asking anyone in your lab whether they have met with the investigator, plan to do so or the content of what they communicated,’’ Lehmann wrote. “Failure to abide by these strong recommendations will be considered a serious breach of trust.”
About six weeks later, an official from one of Sabatini’s principal funders, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, notified Sabatini they had been informed that the Whitehead probe also included sexual misconduct and harassment allegations.
The complaints of Knouse — and others — had been heard.
The escalation Many powerful figures in Sabatini’s situation might have responded to such a potentially career-destroying crisis with contrition and humility. And some institutions, faced with accusations about an accomplished longtime employee, might have sought or negotiated a compromise disciplinary path.
In this case, neither Sabatini nor Whitehead opted for moderation.
Sabatini told the Globe that his lab had developed a vibrant culture and that he felt no need for apologies.
Lehmann would not comment on whether Whitehead leadership had considered a less confrontational legal option — anything short of a full investigation by a law firm.
The probe stretched over five months. The law firm hired by Whitehead, Hinckley Allen, assigned three lawyers to investigate the culture of the lab and Sabatini’s leadership. The lawyers interviewed more than 40 people and collected more than one million records, including e-mails, texts, and Slack messages, pulled from Whitehead’s IT system.
From left, William Sinnott, former corporation counsel in Boston, Tara Singh, and Elizabeth McEvoy were the team of lawyers from Hinckley Allen to conduct the investigation of David Sabatini and his lab. From left, William Sinnott, former corporation counsel in Boston, Tara Singh, and Elizabeth McEvoy were the team of lawyers from Hinckley Allen to conduct the investigation of David Sabatini and his lab. (Handout/Hinckley Allen) Sabatini said his sense of alarm began to grow about a week after the probe began. Though Lehmann had told him not to speak to lab members about the investigation, he did have conversations with some employees and learned that lawyers had asked tough questions that seemed aimed at him.
Sabatini also had to know that something he had kept secret — the fact of his past sexual relationship with Knouse — could blow up at any time with potentially damaging consequences. Such a relationship was strictly barred under Whitehead policies, and of course he knew that, too.
That Knouse might reveal the secret could not have surprised Sabatini. The space between Knouse and Sabatini had grown hostile since the investigation began, as she had virtually stopped talking to him and moved her lab office — previously next to Sabatini’s — to a different floor.
But if there was any doubt in his mind, it likely evaporated shortly after the probe began. Two of the top litigators in the city, Gertner, the former federal judge, and Ellen Zucker, a high-powered lawyer who handles many employment cases, notified Sabatini that they had been retained by Knouse and may be filing a potential harassment and retaliation case after the Whitehead investigation was over.
With the lawyers on board, Whitehead and MIT were also put on notice; the stakes had been exponentially raised.
But even then, Sabatini said, he did not see this for the existential threat it was. He said he banked on his own sense of what was true — and on his trust in his colleagues to put the complaints in proper perspective.
“I had a feeling that, OK, this is my home,’’ he said, of Whitehead, during a Globe interview. “I’ve been here forever. I’ve done lots of good and this will be fine.”
He said he asked to speak to Lehmann as the investigation began, but Lehmann declined, saying she wanted to let the investigation play out.
Sabatini soon hired Cambridge lawyer Todd Bennett to advise him.
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Morale inside the lab plummeted. A number of former lab members who were questioned in the investigation told the Globe that they left their interviews shellshocked by the aggressive tone of the questions they were asked.
“It felt like the lawyers came with a thesis already made,” said one former lab member.
A Whitehead staff member said several Sabatini lab members confided in him, saying they felt “they would be personally in trouble if they didn’t give the answer these lawyers were looking for.”
“A couple of people said they wrote to Ruth [Lehmann] to say it was a manipulated process, and they felt harmed by it,” he said.
Lehmann acknowledged that some lab members raised concerns about the Hinckley investigation, and she was later assured, after speaking to the investigators, that they were making every effort to “minimize stress” in the lab.
Investigators interviewed Sabatini three times, Knouse twice. In the first of those sessions, she revealed her sexual interactions with Sabatini; it was the first time investigators said they learned of the liaisons. When they later questioned Sabatini about this revelation, he then admitted that he took part in it and depicted it as a consensual relationship between colleagues.
Meanwhile, even though ordered by Lehmann not to interfere with the investigation, Sabatini did more than just speak to some lab members. He also acknowledged to the Globe he showed several of them a sample of the texts Knouse had sent him in early 2020 when she wrote of wanting a deeper relationship with him.
Sabatini insisted to the Globe that he did not obstruct the investigation. He said that after hearing comments from members about their interviews with investigators, he had merely asked them whether they thought the probe was really about lab culture. A former member of his lab told the Globe he believed Sabatini had reached out to other lab members out of concern, after being told that some were “freaking out.”
The investigators submitted the report to Whitehead executives on Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, and then to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and MIT.
A scathing report The investigative report resounded like a thunderclap. It stretched over 248 pages and painted a scathing portrait of Sabatini. There were only a limited number of positive references to him, citing his scientific brilliance and leadership of an intense, hard-charging lab bent on breakthrough findings. Investigators noted that the vast majority of lab members did not complain and that negative experiences were confined to a smaller number of lab members, among them “females and diverse members.”
The Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge. The Whitehead Institute in Kendall Square in Cambridge. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) Still, in the main, it was an unrelentingly negative depiction of Sabatini as a man who acted as if the rules didn’t apply to him. It cited Sabatini for enabling — and participating — in a gossip-filled environment with uncomfortable sexual overtones, and included specific examples.
High up in the report, they accused him of obstruction, for engaging with lab members in violation of Lehmann’s directive, and there was also the critical question of Sabatini’s credibility. It is a sphere in which they deemed him wanting. He was depicted in the report as “not credible” during his three interviews, even when presented with texts or other information to contradict his accounts.
For instance, according to investigators, Sabatini allegedly denied making a comment about preferring European women to American women because they talked more freely about sex, but was later presented with e-mails or texts suggesting he had.
Sabatini later would tell the Globe that investigators had asked him about incidents in the past that he simply couldn’t immediately recall.
It was clear that in the credibility contest between Sabatini and Knouse, the investigators overall believed Knouse. They also said they did not think she was motivated as a spurned lover to speak out.
Investigators said they did not find that Knouse had disclosed her sexual relationship with Sabatini to damage his reputation. They said they believed that “she felt trapped and obligated to Sabatini because he was her Fellow mentor and senior scientist.”
Investigators, for example, found credible Knouse’s assertion that it was Sabatini who was the initiator of almost all their proposed or actual sexual encounters. And that she was pressured to have sex with him in the fall of 2018 when she was a fellow on her first Whitehead retreat in New Hampshire. Sabatini admitted they had sex once at that retreat, at least several months after their first encounter, but told investigators that Knouse initiated it, and subsequent texts turned over to investigators represented their efforts to arrange for it. He also said that she never expressed misgivings.
Knouse produced texts showing he requested sex three times beginning before the retreat when he inquired of her, “Maybe a discrete consult in NH?” She also shared a text showing she told him she was reluctant to go along, citing “(a)ggressive policies, pre-existing target on my back, residence at the bottom of the food chain, and rooming with other fellows leaves so little room.”
The investigators reviewed many texts between the two, but not nearly all of them. Sabatini turned over all of his after the end of 2019, that is, after the sexual liaisons were over. He said prior texts were on another phone he no longer has. Knouse turned over a selection of her texts from the whole span of her relationship with Sabatini, focused on those that support her version of events.
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Email [email protected] SUBMIT Knouse had also told them of seemingly contradictory emotions about Sabatini, sometimes apparently wanting more from him, other times complaining about being exploited.
She “stated that her comments reflected her mixed and complex feelings for Sabatini at that time. (Knouse) told investigators that part of her wanted to be in a real, not simply sexual relationship with Sabatini, but that ... she knew that the ongoing sexual relationship with Sabatini had been the source of her deep mental health struggles, lack of productivity, and unhappiness.”
The report details the starkly diverging narratives from Knouse and Sabatini about what led them to have sex for the first time April 18, 2018, in Sabatini’s hotel room at Maryland’s Rockville Hotel after a night of drinking and dinner at a restaurant in Washington D.C.
According to Knouse, she was coaxed that night to lie on the bed next to him, even as she told him that this was a bad idea. When she recounted the reasons, including professional ones, she said he got angry and impatient. She said she felt she could not say no to him because of his stature in the field, and potential influence on her career, and eventually yielded to having sex. She said that she continued to acquiesce and have sex with him on other occasions, but that her mind was full of mixed feelings.
According to Sabatini, the entire sexual encounter was mutual from the start, and he had no recollection of her protesting for any reason.
He has told the Globe that he had considered Knouse a good friend. He said he believed that Knouse, a woman in her early 30s who now ran her own lab, would have been comfortable saying no if she didn’t want to have sex with him and that he would have respected that.
The investigators made no findings on whether the relationship was consensual, saying it was not part of their mandate. But the investigators said Sabatini and Knouse both violated Whitehead policies barring all principal investigators from having a romantic or sexual relationship with any Whitehead employee, even of the same high level. They did note that Sabatini was a more significant offender due to the status difference between them. He was a tenured faculty member 20 years her senior who still held some official “mentor” roles in her professional career.
In conclusion, the investigators placed Sabatini at the center of the blame, writing: “These findings, in the aggregate, portray a high-achieving but troubled laboratory led by a brilliant but personally flawed and immature scientist whose management of a diverse, talented and vulnerable workforce is inconsistent, arbitrary and, at times, lacking in professionalism and social awareness.”
A rapid-fire ending Sabatini received the report on Aug. 19, 2021, about six days after it was first released to Whitehead. Within a day of his receiving it, Sabatini’s career imploded.
He told the Globe that he was stunned by the harsh judgments of the report, believing that after 24 years running one of the top labs at Whitehead, he would be given a chance to defend himself against the report’s conclusions.
He was given opportunities to meet with his superiors, but Sabatini saw them as formalities, not a credible offer to hear his side.
He was out within a day — beyond warp speed in the world of academic discipline.
Hours after receiving the report, Sabatini got an e-mail from Erin O’Shea, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, asking him to be part of a meeting the next day, on Aug. 20, at 1 p.m. Lehmann was also scheduled to be part of the same scheduled meeting.
That morning around 10:30, the Whitehead board of directors voted to empower a subcommittee of seven members to rule on Lehmann’s conclusion about what should happen with Sabatini. That panel voted unanimously “to affirm the recommendation of the President to terminate David Sabatini as a Member of the Institute on Aug. 20, 2021 unless her recommendation changes.”
The subcommittee included not just Lehmann, Hockfield, and Sharp, but three prominent members of the business community and MIT economic professor Paul Joskow.
David Sabatini''s belongings from his Whitehead lab were dropped off at his home in Cambridge shortly after he resigned in August 2021. David Sabatini''s belongings from his Whitehead lab were dropped off at his home in Cambridge shortly after he resigned in August 2021. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) Sabatini told the Globe he learned from his lawyer he was going to be fired at the 1 p.m. meeting. Lehmann, though, told the Globe the purpose of the meeting was “to hear David’s side of the story.” She added, “He could have asked for the opportunity to provide further information.”
But Sabatini did not show up at the meeting. Around 11:50 a.m., he sent separate e-mails to Lehmann and O’Shea, saying he was resigning. Lehmann e-mailed back and accepted his resignation.
But O’Shea rejected his resignation and fired him instead, saying in a letter that it was “for cause” and “due to violations of Whitehead Institute and HHMI policies, practices and principles.”
Meanwhile, officials at MIT informed Sabatini that they had received the Whitehead report and that he was being put on unpaid administrative leave while administrators reviewed next steps, including whether to revoke his tenure.
“The report raises very serious concerns about sexual and workplace harassment,’’ wrote Nergis Mavalvala, MIT’s dean of science, in a letter to the biology faculty.
The news threw the Sabatini lab on the sixth floor of the Whitehead Institute into total chaos, as lab members scrambled to save their research projects and figure out if they had a job anymore.
This place where lab experiments once hummed, where scientists hoped to break new ground and find cures for cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s, went quiet.
Lawsuits, but new hopes Sabatini’s paychecks stopped. His mail slot was stuffed daily with notices from organizations cutting ties with him. He learned that his membership in the National Academy of Sciences was being reviewed in light of the allegations.
Sabatini hired prominent Boston litigator Lisa Arrowood to help set the record straight, at least as he saw it. He felt his only recourse for a fair hearing was in the courts. In October 2021, Sabatini filed a civil defamation lawsuit in state court, depicting Knouse and Lehmann as conspiring to bring him down and using the DEI survey as a pretext.
David Sabatini, responding to e-mail at his home in Cambridge in the fall of 2022. David Sabatini, responding to e-mail at his home in Cambridge in the fall of 2022. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) “My life was 100 percent destroyed,” he told the Globe. “This disrupted the lives of ... all my family members. ... My father will die before this is cleared up. So how am I supposed to get my life back other than to get the truth out there?”
Knouse later filed a countersuit, alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.
On social media, people in and outside academia either railed against Sabatini or fiercely defended him.
He saw support from some prominent academics who questioned his treatment by Whitehead. The former dean of Harvard Medical Center, Jeffrey Flier, asked on Twitter, shortly after Sabatini’s ousting, if Sabatini had received a fair hearing. Harvey Lodish, one of the founding members of Whitehead, told the Globe he believed Sabatini’s punishment was too extreme.
Then, a number of weeks after the scandal exploded, in the fall of 2021, Sabatini had a welcome phone conversation with a friend that led him to think, perhaps, his future as a scientist wasn’t totally destroyed.
She was Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, an academic medical center in Manhattan, and a cancer researcher who knows Sabatini’s father, a former head of the cell biology department at NYU.
Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, helped lead efforts to see if the university might create a position for David Sabatini. Dafna Bar-Sagi, executive vice president of NYU Langone Health, helped lead efforts to see if the university might create a position for David Sabatini. (Sylvain Gaboury) After hearing Sabatini out, Bar-Sagi thought the public version of the Sabatini story was, at the very least, incomplete. She cared about the treatment and advancement of women in science, and also knew from experience that relationships and lab culture issues can be complex. “I just felt that maybe there is more to the story than meets the eye,” she said in an interview.
Given Sabatini’s scientific skill, she said she believed he could be valuable at NYU, but only if leadership at the school felt comfortable after reviewing the allegations.
Sabatini arranged through lawyers to provide NYU with Whitehead’s confidential investigative report, letters, texts, and e-mails.
In the coming months, NYU’s vetting of Sabatini fell largely to Bar-Sagi, two other top female executives, and an outside law firm. Bar-Sagi said she began by speaking to some former Sabatini trainees, as well as professional colleagues who knew Sabatini and his mentees. She said she came to think that the depiction of Sabatini’s lab as having a “toxic” atmosphere was wrong.
The team also thought the penalty applied to Sabatini was out of proportion, based on their preliminary review.
They brought their initial findings to Ken Langone, chair of NYU Langone Health.
My life was 100 percent destroyed. This disrupted the lives of ... all my family members. ... My father will die before this is cleared up. So how am I supposed to get my life back other than to get the truth out there?” David Sabatini “In our opinion, due process had not applied,” Langone told the Globe. “We weren’t ready to make a deal with him, but we felt he was an outstanding talent and hadn’t done anything that would prohibit our interest in him.”
It was a head-snapping turn of events: Top scientists at another leading research institution had reviewed the case and reached a much more forgiving conclusion, one that gave Sabatini a chance to salvage his career.
NYU was considering offering him a non-tenured position for a trial period, with an out-clause so the school could freely dismiss Sabatini if more derogatory information surfaced.
Opinion was not unanimous among the school’s top leaders. Some NYU faculty did not want to be second-guessing the prestigious Whitehead Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and MIT. University president Andrew Hamilton strongly recommended against bringing Sabatini on board, clearly an important voice in the controversy.
On March 1, 2022, Sabatini took a train to Manhattan. He had been invited to a formal dinner thrown by the Pershing Square foundation, a charity that provides grants to young researchers. Sabatini had done volunteer work for the foundation, one of the few groups that did not cut ties with him after the scandal.
When the co-founder of the foundation, billionaire philanthropist Bill Ackman, rose to offer some remarks, something surprising happened: Ackman spoke to the audience about the presumption of innocence, and David Sabatini.
Imagine if it were you, Ackman urged the crowd. Imagine if someone accused you and your career was over and there was no due process or chance to defend yourself.
When Ackman finished, people around the room began talking — talking about Sabatini. Word apparently spread that NYU was interested in him. By the end of April, the news reached Science magazine, which broke the story that NYU was in discussions with Sabatini over a faculty position.
The backlash on campus built quickly.
Graduate students, faculty, and alumni from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine participated in a walkout in April 2022 to protest news that the school was seriously considering hiring David Sabatini. Graduate students, faculty, and alumni from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine participated in a walkout in April 2022 to protest news that the school was seriously considering hiring David Sabatini. (Dieu-Nalio Chéry/The New York Times) In late April, some 200 students and faculty from NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine poured into the streets in a high-profile demonstration against the school’s interest in Sabatini.
They held handmade signs: “Say No to Sabatini,” and “Students Against Sabatini!”
Hundreds of students and faculty members signed a petition to “collectively condemn NYU for the immense harm already done by even considering Sabatini’s employment.”
Several dozen of Sabatini’s former mentees tried to help his cause by endorsing a letter praising Sabatini and his lab’s culture, but the signees remained anonymous, for fear of career reprisals. In any case, the letter was overshadowed by the tsunami of opposition.
It was quickly obvious to NYU officials that hiring Sabatini was impossible in the face of such controversy and division.
Sabatini’s hopes for a second chance evaporated.
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Epilogue Today, all seven floors of Whitehead’s red brick building are humming again. Lehmann, now past her second year as the head of Whitehead and a faculty member with her own lab, says she has pushed for new hires and better communication channels with nearby research institutes. She also speaks of a renewed focus, and action plans, to foster “an inclusive, respectful, and diverse culture that inspires individuals to achieve their full potential.”
But some things haven’t changed.
Whitehead has added no formal management training, or made other institution-wide changes, that would prevent the emergence of over-powerful principal investigators. While Whitehead did implement additional antiharassment training, its rules regarding consensual workplace relationships still do not provide potential violators with a way to disclose a relationship and still keep their jobs.
But Lehmann insisted significant change is well underway. She has crafted Whitehead’s values statement and said Whitehead also adopted Jones Diversity’s recommendations, including for DEI training. And she said she strives for these cultural changes, while also aiming to hire the very best scientists.
Knouse resigned from Whitehead in June 2021, a couple months before the investigative report was released. She now runs her own lab inside the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and is also an assistant MIT biology professor.
But life over the past year has been far from easy. She has been the target of relentless attacks on Twitter as the woman who took down Sabatini. Some of the top responses to Google searches about her are about this scandal, not her science. “With every first interaction I have with someone,” she told the Globe, ”I have to think about what they’ve read about me.”
Kristin Knouse appeared at a Suffolk Superior Court hearing in December 2022 during which her lawyers sought to dismiss Sabatini''s defamation case against her, and his lawyers also sought to dismiss her counter-claim for sexual harassment. Sabatini did not appear in court that day and the judge has issued no decision yet. Kristin Knouse appeared at a Suffolk Superior Court hearing in December 2022 during which her lawyers sought to dismiss Sabatini''s defamation case against her, and his lawyers also sought to dismiss her counter-claim for sexual harassment. Sabatini did not appear in court that day and the judge has issued no decision yet. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff) “This hurts so much,” she said in an interview during which she wept periodically.
Still, she works hard not to let the controversy or the ongoing court cases distract her from lab work. In November, she published a paper in Cell Genomics about her lab’s development of a novel technology that will allow researchers to investigate the function of every gene in a living mammal.
Sabatini is still looking for a way to pursue his passion for scientific discovery. He jumps at the chance to talk science when his former lab members reach out. They often do, but not enough to fill all his time.
He has fielded some job interest from scientific organizations interested in buying low on a distressed asset. Some are outside the US, opportunities that are hard to consider with his son living in Cambridge.
“I would like to run a lab again,” he said.
The ways his life has changed for the worse since the scandal are practically endless, he said. But some change is for the better. He said he has grown more empathetic and he is more appreciative of true friends than ever.
David Sabatini sat on the doorsteps at his home in Cambridge last September. David Sabatini sat on the doorsteps at his home in Cambridge last September. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff) His marriage to Pernas did not survive. They separated in mid-2021, before the investigative report came out, and then divorced. He said they are still friends.
One warm afternoon last summer, Sabatini sat on a bench near a fountain in a small park near his home in Cambridge, and talked longingly about the thrilling science he used to do.
While he spoke, a small gray bird, a catbird, perhaps, somehow became trapped in the fountain. It beat its delicate wings against the water but could only circle the pool, like something going down the drain.
“That bird is going to drown if we don’t save it,” Sabatini said. He knelt at the edge of the pool, gently scooped up the bird in his cupped hands, and set it on the ground.
He said nothing, just watched the bird hop away, free.
To reach the Spotlight Team staff members who worked on this piece, please write to [email protected] or call 617-929-7483 or individually at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
具体告的什么？看来之前不是和平分手？
哈哈，尽情吃！觉得美国新闻报道的瓜太详实了，应有尽有!
哈哈，昨天看了一晚上，早上马上跑来写总结，什么时候写东西能这么有动力就好了 :)
看报道，以前是和平分手，好像本来也没想告Sabatini，结果去了几个平权活动后开始反思是否自己被exploit了之后联系了Title IX，被告知需要多点证人，于是就开始组织好几个女同事博后开始收集证据，似乎是sexual harassment。
总是，觉得Sabatini娶了C了刺激到了Knouse，因为她曾经提到想做Sabatini的wife，因爱生恨？
好，满足你的要求，照片发上来了！
可能自己没找到更优秀的对方却先move on了心有不甘。聪明人不该吃窝边草，一开始二情相愿后面可能翻脸，尤其政治正确的环境下
我没说Knouse是碧池。 不过看下来觉得MIT在这件事调查上有点仓促和一边倒，也没有给Sabatini任何解释的机会就立马fire了，可能是撞上me2的枪口了？ 觉得以后男女恋爱尽量要同级，年龄地位别差太多，不然政策估计倾向于女性一边？ 最后，分手后别纠结，赶快move on，不然就会出现一方有了新欢而还在单身的一方就心里不舒服了。 哎呀八卦完了一下子就清爽好多，突然也有了干活的动力 :)
MIT太搞笑了，出了这个事后面政策改同级同事间可以恋爱。这女的能当上AP是不是MIT怕惹事给的位置
想起来 西雅图不眠夜 里Sam的对白：
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好，是我误解了。但是这女的真不是好惹的。 假设两人最初彼此吸引，有缘走了一段，最后竟然开撕毁掉对方。真是爱恨只在一念间。 美国me2运动不是盖的。 设想如果性别对换--50岁女教授和30岁男博士来这么一出--会是什么结果？
不是 lab
楼主好像也有很强的倾向性呀，如果几个女同事和博后都有证据证明sabatini 有性骚扰，那不怨啊
haha 好贴切。。。scares the sh*t of every man in America
就像很多人在文革中举报亲人朋友一样，左派运动的洗脑能力和宗教不遑多让，都是为了“信仰”“正义”不顾人的感情
太牛了 这么大篇看完还写总结！！！
c去的是麻省
嗯，一家牛人
支持。这种级别差异出现的男女关系，只有当事人知道是不是迫于压力
最初从whiskey tasting开始，不是上下级关系。第一夜看起来是 drunken one night stand, 然后也是两厢情愿，或者说也许女的更积极一些。2019年底K还发信想要确定和S的关系，被S拒绝。感觉一开始S对K就不是那么感兴趣，因为他更喜欢C。 S犯的错是对人家没意思，赶紧快刀斩乱麻，别以为friends with benefit那么容易。毕竟K想要的是婚姻。要是给不了就别招惹人家。
你把50岁mit教授想得太简单了。你这么说感觉老白男好无辜呀。这可是业界大牛。智商人脉都高于普通人。
事实上是，老白男知道他自己有权有势可以帮助职场小白女搞定什么，推荐信，文章署名，教职，项目申请。利用这个自身的权势，想白嫖女的。
他弟弟是干啥的？
你咋不看看他爸是干啥的。
就像你说钱露露老公牛，老公的sister牛，你咋不看看他两爸牛不牛。
我没有看错你的id吧！
女的真是不无辜。MIT改政策更搞笑了。男的可以回头起诉MI T wrongful termination了。
没说他无辜，肯定也不是好货。但是他也不是每个都嫖然后拍拍屁股走人不是，最后不是还是put a ring on C。他和Weinstein 还是有差距的。
咋滴，你要给我转huaren魅力吗？
这个是为啥？纽大学生路见不平一声吼？还是说男教授在纽大也有孽债？
这这这... 哈哈，身边几个朋友是他们的朋友或同事，所以多少对他们的事情有所耳闻，不过没想到结果是这样，而且还居然上了Boston Globe的Spotlight Team的头版，实在忍不住跑来继续八卦啦😄
大妈们天天说融不进美国社会，这和社会脱节的忒多了。
当然不是了。这里主要是权势性侵。或者说权势性关系。 mit大牛正教授手握资源，高级博后小白女还没有正式教职。
这小白女干什么不好，想不开做什么高级博后…还和老男人不清不白。以后还怎么混圈。
s想白嫖。 k说凭啥？拔diao无情我让你吃不了兜着走。
早就有教训，眼睛都不要乱看，办公室的门都不要乱关，何况搞上床
把对方搞上床了就是等于把自己摆上台，对方怎么说都由不得你
哈哈，同以为
近几年学界me too运动
澄清一下，我绝对没有为Sabatini辩护的意思，我只是觉得MIT对他的事件的惩罚有点过头了，至少应该给他一个讲话的机会，而律师的问题也比较leading，有悖于neutral investigation。而且看着新闻觉得他们多少是算consensual的关系才上的床，他们两个虽然有年龄地位区别，但是他们都是Whitehead的PI，新闻里列举了好几对学术couple，作为学术圈的，觉得不允许教授和博后或学生恋爱是完全支持的，但是教授和教授平级恋爱的，身边也有好多对，都是同事开始谈恋爱，也没出什么幺蛾子，估计要是没有这个规定，两个人一开始光明正大上床恋爱，也许也不会到今天的地步呢。
啊，这不是前两天的疑似UC Davis被解雇的教授老婆ID么？怎么也跑这里来了，还铿锵激昂的样子...
不是，除了他爸爸是那里的教授之外，他在纽大没有什么瓜葛，主要是NYU的woke学生组织的，而且今天下午居然发现组织抗议的也是认识的朋友，这个世界太太太太小啦！
大妈们就是长舌妇一样喜欢听悲催的跑出来哭哭叽叽家长里短的破事。 和大妈们多说一句干货都是我输。
上次那个国人叫兽，竟然还为找不到工作赢了钱。
这两者的关系不一样，而且还不是叫兽跟学生的关系，本人还牛那么多，也找不到工作。
那个国人叫兽的判决，真是一团浆糊啊。
哈哈哈，谢谢lz总结，好精彩
确实总结得非常好👍
NYU学生组织示威是正常操作，不示威才不正常呢。
我针对的是Globe Report里面的A rapid-fire ending部分，你自己回去看看吧。
此外，本来这件事就是见仁见智，但是鉴于你前两天里为你那个UC Davis的前教授老公侵犯那么多女孩子，包括未成年的辩护的前科，我不想和你有任何进一步的讨论，你在我的楼里怎么积极表现我也不会进一步回复了，无论如何你怎么为Knouse辩护也改变不了我对你和你老公的行径的蔑视和唾斥。
有道理。哇，原来是个女教授，难怪文笔好
她应该不是那夫人，是受害方朋友或者受害方
他两个要是同事那我和我们的CEO也算同事。
这个whitehead fellow不是lab的名字，是一个超级牛的fellowship
这是一个大研究所，我有几年时间上班每天从门前走过。据说风气很不好。造假成风。旁边的BROAD (张锋是其中一个PI）就好得多。
啊？我怎么记得那个ID一段段回顾她怎么和她老公认识的，之后又对他的行径熟视无睹，最后说什么年轻女孩子就得知道什么世界是人吃人的，弱者就要被猎杀什么的。后来大家说多了就删贴了，怎么又成了受害方了？
你看下网友提到的她很多年前的帖子就明白了。
wow还有这事情？不过粗看一下，好像主要是说图像什么的图放错了，说结论还是一样的呀？不过生物圈子里发paper本来就很难，而且要replicate更难，所以关于这个问题我还是暂且不多说了，毕竟不是专业生物人士。
眼尖啊！
哪里是做单纯的朋友，是想做friend with benefits,这种身份占便宜太不妥当。