Citation

Else H. Nature 2018; 561(7724): 442-443.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/d41586-018-06764-9

PMID

30254349

Abstract

A research-funding foundation has revoked a £1-million (US$1.3-million) grant from prominent palaeontologist Nicholas Longrich, who was disciplined by his institution, the University of Bath, UK, after an investigation found he had breached its anti-harassment policy.

Longrich was part of a team that in 2015 reported the first four-legged fossil snake, a high-profile discovery published in Science1; in 2010, he grabbed the media spotlight with his discovery2 of the whimsically named Mojoceratops perifania dinosaur.

The Leverhulme Trust awarded the £998,185 grant — at least three-quarters of which was dedicated to paying research assistants and postgraduate students — to Longrich in 2016 for research on a mass-extinction event that marks the end of the Cretaceous era 66 million years ago.

“We can confirm that Dr Longrich’s grant has been withdrawn but his doctoral students will not be disadvantaged by this,” said a spokesperson for the foundation, which distributes £80 million of research funding each year. Leverhulme declined to add further details, and referred further queries to the University of Bath...

Language: en

Keywords

Funding; Institutions; Lab life; Policy