“There is wide agreement that we have a serious problem.” via ScienceMagazine
Some women at NICHD staunchly support Stratakis, saying he faced structural obstacles to boosting the numbers of women running DIR labs. Other women say he advanced their careers and had reason to curtail those of others, including some who filed EEO complaints.
That task fell to Stratakis, a leading Greek-born geneticist who discovered the genetic basis of several rare tumors. A charismatic figure who spouts Greek aphorisms and drives a midnight blue Porsche, Stratakis has been spotted stooping to tie a patient’s shoelaces. He earned his M.D. and a doctorate from the University of Athens and then completed a pediatrics residency and subspecialty training at Georgetown University.
But Stratakis’s critics say that doesn’t excuse his failure to recruit and retain young female scientists or explain why proportionally more women than men left DIR. And some current and former female scientists at NICHD, both young and older, say Stratakis badly damaged their careers., a Ph.D. biochemist who is chief of NICHD’s Contraceptive Development Program, met with Nieman and Stratakis.
Nieman and NIH agreed on a settlement of her EEO complaint in 2015. But she says she despairs at how Stratakis harmed her career. “I know that I won’t ever be able to do things I could have done.” Of the eight EEO complaints filed by women against Stratakis, six alleged sex discrimination, sometimes combined with age discrimination, and two alleged age discrimination alone. Three complaints have been settled. A fourth complainant lost a lawsuit on appeal, a fifth dropped her complaint after quitting the agency, and a sixth complaint was dismissed. Two others are ongoing.
In the meeting, Stratakis acknowledged the “thin” gynecology lab program but said relevant basic research also occurs in nonobvious places. Today, NICHD in Bethesda has one tenured OB-GYN, Alan DeCherney, 78, whose lab Stratakis closed in 2015 and who now helps train infertility physicians. Stratakis also recently hired three female non–tenure-track gynecologists who focus on pediatric and adolescent gynecology.
NICHD declined to allow Stratakis to comment on Christy’s account and declined to explain why the young physician’s award was returned.Another OB-GYN who left was Erin Wolff, 44, now an infertility consultant in McLean, Virginia. From 2011 to 2016, she was an assistant clinical investigator, part of an NICHD program grooming her to become a tenure-track scientist.
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