Two senior female scientists are suing their employer, the famous Salk Institute for Biology, for alleged widespread and long-standing gender discrimination. This independent institute in San Diego, California, was founded 57 years ago by Jonas Salk, a pioneer of polio vaccine. Katherine Jones (left) and Vicki Lundblad (right) say that sex discrimination at the Salk Institute has hurt their profession. Photo Credit: Alejandro Tamayo/San Diego Union-Tribune via ZUMA Wire In two lawsuits filed to the California High Court in San Diego on July 11th, the plaintiffs Vicki Lundblad and Katherine Jones demanded unspecified compensation for a series of injuries. The 64-year-old Lundblad, a cell biologist renowned for his role in telomere biology, began his career at the Salk Institute in 2003. The 62-year-old Jones is an expert in transcriptional extension (the process of controlling HIV and cancer gene expression). She has been working at the Salk Institute since 1986. Both are tenured professors, and there are four women scientists in similar positions in Salk. According to Lundblad's lawsuit, Salk has 28 male tenured professors. In its allegations, two plaintiffs accused the Salk Institute of systematic and systematic gender discrimination. The plaintiff alleged that Salk’s administration excluded them from funding, pressured them to shrink the lab, despised their research, and prevented them from receiving generous funding considerations. "The fact that Solker Jean's "Old Boys Club" culture dominates creates a hostile working environment for Salk's lifelong female professor," Lundblad said in his lawsuit. According to Jones’s allegations, the Institute also prevented women scientists from benefiting from the proceeds from financing activities in 2013, which proclaimed “the Salk Institute strongly supports the wrong view of women in scienceâ€. In his lawsuit, Jones alleged that the Salk leader used female instructors and scientists as "donor bait" to print their photos on postal advertisements for potential donors, "so as to make them look like cords. Erke recognized the importance of retaining female scientists, promoting women scientists, and paying women scientists equally." Located on the Pacific Ocean Parkland, the Salk Institute is a biological legend center with more than 600 scientific researchers. It has past and present an impressive Nobel Prize winner. According to the briefing, in 2016, the Institute raised about 125 million U.S. dollars to support research in areas such as aging, cancer and immunology, diabetes, brain science and plant biology. Ironically, the current director of the institute is a woman: Elizabeth Blackburn, the Nobel Laureate who discovered the identity of the chromosome's terminal molecules and discovered telomerase. She was hired in November 2015 and started in January 2016. jobs. Lundblad alleges: “Even even the newly appointed Director of Solker and one of the world’s most accomplished scientists, Dr. Blackburn, has not been exempted... The accusatory comments, many senior male instructors to her as Director of Solk The ability to produce defamatory statements."
