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OTHER HEADLINES
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
Copyright 2000 Telegraph Group Limited
June 22, 2000, Thursday
HEADLINE: News: Oxford scientist wins the battle for her reputation
NINE months ago, Dr Sunetra Gupta, a talented scientist and award-winning novelist, was falsely accused of having a relationship with a professor to gain a senior academic post at Oxford University. Today, her accuser, Prof Roy Anderson (left), one of Britain's most distinguished scientists, makes a public apology, and Dr Gupta speaks to NATASHA LODER for the first time about her fight to restore her reputation. Dr Gupta tells how she battled to win a retraction from Prof Anderson because "nobody should be allowed to get away with this. I felt there was no other choice".
BYLINE: By Natasha Loder
TO this day, Dr Sunetra Gupta, a young and ambitious academic who was coming to the end of a five-year fellowship within the Oxford University zoology department, does not know exactly what happened when the selection committee met to discuss her application for a readership.
What is known is that the initial vote of the eight-strong panel went six to two in favour of promoting her to the post.
The discussions then became heated and took on a sinister turn. They lasted for two hours.
Prof Roy Anderson, then Linacre professor of zoology at Oxford and a Government adviser on BSE and AIDS, who chaired the meeting, made it clear that he thought Dr Gupta was unsuitable. The committee was adamant that Dr Gupta was the best candidate and a recess was called.
Prof Anderson then told two members of the committee that Dr Gupta, who had worked alongside him for many years, had had a relationship with the head of the department, Paul Harvey, and that was why he supported her appointment.
Prof Harvey also sat on the committee but was apparently unaware of the comments Prof Anderson was making. Dr Gupta still got the post.
When Dr Gupta, 35, discovered what had been said about her, "I started feeling ill and I went home and telephoned my husband".
Dr Gupta said she was "appalled" that, when she later pressed for a public apology, she received no help from Oxford. "It seems to me the university was trying to brush it under the carpet," she said.
Nine months later, she has a retraction. In a letter to her, Prof Anderson, who has already resigned his posts at Oxford as a consequence of his behaviour, now acknowledges there is "no foundation in truth whatsoever" in his comments. …
Dr Gupta, who was born in Calcutta, graduated in biology from Princeton University and gained her PhD from Imperial College, London. Today, she carries out mathematical modelling of disease. She grew up in Ethiopia, Ghana and Liberia, before arriving in London in 1987 to do a PhD with Prof Anderson. …
Soon after she won the readership, she says Prof Anderson began to behave in a "peculiar" way towards her.
"He tried to take away the office that came with the job and he took away the responsibility of running an MSc course without telling me. It was starting to be a bit ridiculous." …
What was most damaging was that she had been accused of not winning her job on merit. The question remains, why did Prof Anderson suggest it?
Dr Gupta is not certain but one of Prof Anderson's letters to her solicitors explained that he felt it was the only explanation as to why she received such forthright support from Prof Harvey. … |