Brian Joseph Stengel

Western New Mexico University | UWNM · Substance Use Disorders and Psychology

I stumbled upon this article (https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2021/07/10587348/ghosting-during-pandemic) while researching the phenomenon of ghosting post-CV19. I'm trying to determine if it's just a reality that I never noticed prior to CV19 or an accelerating phenomenon. I think it's important to call a spade a spade and nothing else. Communication fatigue is the precursor to ghosting but the latter is not a mandate/excuse/reasoning of the former.

In my observations, ghosting goes far beyond intimate relational boundaries and into the stratosphere of life in general. Case in point, I'm trying to secure a paid internship opportunity. The gatekeeper replied via email only after initiating my training facilitator. Once the ball was passed back into my court, the gatekeeper fell off the face of the Earth. No replies to my voicemails and no replies to my emails...the lines went completely silent. Being that I live down the street from the main office of where the gatekeeper works, you'd think this would be motivation to reply, but au contraire; still no reply. I think I'll be paying the office a visit to hold true to my end of the bargain but if I do then they should rest assured that I'll not be dealing with that gatekeeper any longer and I'll only settle for whomever dictates the rules of engagement.

The phenomenon of ghosting across all life domains seems to be ever-growing in both frequency and amplitude and should be a topic brought to the tables of inquiry at the same rate, or greater than, that which it is infecting society as a whole. What are your thoughts and experiences both pre- and post-CV19?

I'm not entirely certain how this "Start a discussion" feature works, but I'll give it a shot anyways.

I can't be the only one experiencing a co-author paraphrasing all my work so that person can maintain complete control over the publishing process. Some have said this issue happens often at the graduate level but never at the undergraduate level. I'm a non-traditional 40-something year old student who has extensive experience with civil rights and so I'm particularly sensitive to people trying to pull a fast-one on me.

In this case, the professor glitched a few times which had me researching copyrights and IP laws a long time ago. However, I waited until after graduation to raise the issue because the university has a history of retaliation when people express concerns of possible civil rights violations. The corruption runs deep at this particular institution, which bases most of its decisions on their intentional lack of policies and procedures addressing fundamental rights such as free speech and intellectual property. In other words, they remain silent on key issues in order to have as much lateral discretion as possible when making critical decisions even when those decisions are inconsistent with both laws and ethics and could potentially ruin a student's entire academic career.

One of the biggest red flags I noticed early on was the professor neglected to go over the section in our textbook that addresses authorship order and publishing rights in the chapter titled "Research Ethics."

I think my mistake was taking for granted that I viewed this entire project as my own because it was based almost entirely on my research into safe consumption sites. The experimental design, methodologies, protocols, and procedures were created by myself during her class in "Research Methods" as graded assignments. It was, and always has been, my original ideas and content from the very beginning; it just never occurred to me that this professor could, or would, even try to scrub me out like this. I trusted this person and considered her a friend and mentor!

Looking back, I cannot remember even a single instance where we had this conversation despite it being a core principle of the American Psychology Association Code of Ethics. The professor is a licensed psychologist and my degree was in psychology so you'd think that would have been something we should have covered at least once. Right?

Has anyone else experienced issues similar to this? How did you handle it? What should I do, or have done, to prevent this from becoming an issue?

As you all can see, I'm copyrighting all my stuff. Why? Because a certain professor at a certain institution has decided she will write me out of my own work by paraphrasing everything and calling it her own.

Evidently this is a common occurrence in the world of U.S. academia but how and why would a professor want to ruin a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a student just for a little bit of praise? What about when the professor sets the ball rolling and then lets the institution break all the rules while relieving he/she of all culpability?