What would you have them do? You can't have privacy only for things you want privacy for, and transparency for things you don't want privacy for.

I would argue for institutional transparency, tempered by individual privacy.

For example, in this situation UPenn is not sharing the information out of "Privacy concerns". These could be alleviated by the scientist in question saying that they are free to share information about that time -- leaving no reason to continue hiding the information except for embarrassment.

Interesting idea. But that sounds dystopian. If the scientist declines, then does the university get to publicize that they wanted to release the information but the scientist blocked it (thus casting suspicion on the scientist)? If not, then people wouldn't be able to tell if the university asked the scientist for release, or the scientist prevented it, which is still the same problem as before (the public doesn't know what happened).

Basically, it sounds like an institution at any time can announce "hey we did nothing wrong, and we would like to explain why, and have just asked the employee if they accept but they haven't responded yet" while the employee would need to confer with lawyers how to control what now becomes a public spectacle (along with its usual problems of libel, PR, fake news, etc.).

> the university get to publicize that they wanted to release the information but the scientist blocked it (thus casting suspicion on the scientist)?

The situation without this rule, is that the university can and will release information that is in its interest and fail to release information that is not. This status quo is worse than what you are describing.

The point is that this biased information about a private individual shouldn't be public information. If the private individual is lying or misrepresenting the situation, then take it to court: don't use their private information against them for public spectacle.

I don't know why you've been downvoted, there are valid criticisms that you've brought up. Especially:

> the employee would need to confer with lawyers how to control what now becomes a public spectacle (along with its usual problems of libel, PR, fake news, etc.).

I don't think I even have a good armchair solution for this, let alone a real one.

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I think in general it's a difference of where I would draw the line. This:

> Basically, it sounds like an institution at any time can announce "hey we did nothing wrong, and we would like to explain why, and have just asked the employee if they accept but they haven't responded yet"

seems like a feature to me, not a bug. If an employee is making accusations against a organization, than the organization should have a chance to clear their name.

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However I don't have a good response to the issues of libel, PR, fake news, etc., except possibly to have a requirement that whatever is put out in the press release from the organization be approved by the ex-employee in question.

This guarantees that

A) The organization is not lying in a way that the employee is harmed by.

B) The employee is not lying in a way the organization is harmed by.

If it's impossible for the two to come to a conclusion, than either party can say something about it, or contest what the other says. This also allows the employee to say "I wanted to do a joint press release with $org, but we could not come to an agreement about what to release.", so at least the damage from this can be turned either direction.

Edit: Formatting

They could have said "However, we can say we are happy that she has found success in her career and, as many should be, we are grateful for her contributions in finding a vaccine"

And the demotion was for focusing on the less and less popular mRNA with idea of using it for vaccines, instead of something that would bring grant funding.

She was demoted precisely for doing what led to the techniques used by Biontech and Moderna.

It wasn't political or that someone had some beef with her research at Penn. Ultimately a requirement for academic labs is that you need to find a way to pay for your own research, because there just isn't money otherwise. Schools provide some startup funds to early career professors to get things going and equipment purchased, maybe a few salaries covered for a time, but the expectation is that they start securing their own funding themselves by writing grants to funding agencies calling for research in certain areas. This is why most Principle Investigators (PIs) are in their offices writing grants and keeping up with calls for proposals from funding agencies, and not in the lab toiling over experiments; gotta keep the funding coming and everyone under your wing employed. In my experience when PIs failed to secure grant money, at that point the lab had already spooled down and there isn't any more salaries to pay, and they usually just transitioned to a teaching professor role or a more administrative role in the department, covering their salary through those efforts rather than grant funding.

Exactly. Her moving to BioNTech seems to have been the best outcome possible... even though I completely understand her sourness at Penn. But it sounds like she’ll get the last laugh and can call out Penn for its lack of vision.

yeah, and it is entirely possible that developing mRNA technology simply wasn't a good fit for Penn, even if it was long term viable and within their ability to fund.

It it seems pretty unfair to say that "the school wasn’t very supportive of the scientist who led the charge."

They gave her 6 years runway while she tried to find external funding and get the technology off the ground before kicking her off tenure, and kept her on payroll until the she made her breakthrough another 10 years later.

If I understand the timeline right, she started at Penn in 89, was kicked off tenure in 95, published her major mRNA paper in 2005, then left Penn to be a senior VP in 2013.